Hotels finally start catering to neurodivergent guests; staff given sensitivity training
- Hotels and resorts are training staff and aiming to cater to neurodivergent guests, offering video tours and listing potential sensory triggers
On a family trip to Walt Disney’s Orlando theme parks, in the United States, Nicole Thibault’s two-year-old son began experiencing meltdowns.
Everything he had previously loved became deeply distressing, from his favourite characters to familiar foods setting off tantrums that could stretch for more than 30 minutes. Something felt amiss, Thibault recalls of the weeks before her son was diagnosed with autism.
Determined to continue showing her son the world – without meltdowns – her next step was to solicit travel tips from experienced parents of neurodivergent children. One after another, the responses poured in, variants on the same idea: “We don’t go anywhere. It’s just too hard.”
A decade later, Thibault has built her New York-based travel agency, Magical Storybook Travels, into a thriving business that caters specifically to neurodivergent families.
In pre-travel counselling sessions for her clients, she studies their daily routines and preferences before discussing potential destinations. Then she offers detailed briefs for each suggested hotel, including video tours, floor plans and potential sensory triggers (such as possible fireworks displays in the vicinity or strong scents in the lobby) to set expectations.
In the US, around 20 per cent of the population (66 million people) have some form of neurodivergence. These conditions range from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder to dyslexia and Tourette’s syndrome.
