Days Inn to Redo Hundreds of Hotels for Disabled Access

Days Inn, the world’s largest hotel chain, agreed Thursday under pressure of pending lawsuits and a Justice Department investigation to make hundreds of its newer hotels across the country more accessible to people with disabilities.

Under a settlement filed in federal court, Days Inn of America Inc. will seek to ensure that all hotels built since early 1993 or still in development will have walkways, doorways and bathrooms wide enough to accommodate guests using wheelchairs. Those hotels also will have more accessible parking spaces and innovations such as improved visual fire-alarm systems for hearing-impaired people.

Justice Department officials called the agreement a landmark settlement under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, which protects the civil rights of an estimated 49 million disabled citizens in public accommodations and hiring practices.

John Wodatch, who heads the department’s disability-rights section, said the settlement with the dominant Days Inn chain should encourage similar building improvements throughout the hotel industry.

“We think [access for the disabled] is an industrywide problem,” Wodatch said. “We intend to follow up with other hotels and hotel chains in the United States to ensure that this problem doesn’t exist.”

Although Wodatch said the department is conducting 260 other investigations involving hotels, department officials in the last year reached agreement with the entire Holiday Inn chain for its removal of existing barriers that could hamper people using wheelchairs and the improvement of its room-reservation process for guests with disabilities. Following guest complaints, the department also reached agreement recently with MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told reporters that Days Inn and its parent, Cendant, will establish a $4.75-million interest-free loan program to help its franchisees pay for renovations needed to bring their hotels into compliance with the law.

Declaring that “this initiative will serve as a model for hotel operators nationwide,” Reno added that in the future “the architect, the contractor and the owner of the [Days Inn] hotel must certify that it meets all Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.”

Days Inn has 1,900 hotels in the U.S., all owned by franchise holders. About 200 Days Inns are affected by the agreement, mainly in Southern states but including some of the several dozen scattered throughout California. To avoid imposing excessive renovation costs on owners of old buildings, the law applies only to structures built in recent years and those yet to be built.

When it enacted the disabilities law nine years ago, Congress encouraged federal officials to negotiate settlements that would not burden businesspeople with unreasonable costs.

David Jimenez, a spokesman for Days Inn, said: “We’re pleased to have reached an amicable agreement.”

“The goal for both sides was always to ensure that guests with disabilities have the same access to facilities and services . . . and that a fair process of financing the necessary renovations be created,” Jimenez added.

“We believe we formulated a settlement that is good for our customers, the traveling public and the hotel industry,” he said.

Wodatch said that the department receives more complaints about hotels than other public facilities and that it began investigating Days Inn five years ago. Ultimately, the government filed five lawsuits, which were settled by the joint agreement.

Similarly, the department has negotiated a number of agreements with restaurant chains to widen entrances for wheelchair users and to lower counters in some cases. Notable in recent years have been settlements with Burger King, Friendly’s Restaurants and Wendy’s International Inc.

“Our mediation efforts with businesses have been extremely successful,” Bill Lann Lee, a former Los Angeles lawyer who is acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a recent interview.

“More than 90% of our cases have been settled short of court decisions,” he said.