THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE BESPOKE ACCESS AWARDS

Robin Sheppard is co-founder of the Bespoke Hotels group, and has been a hotelier for more than 40 years. In December 2004, he contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, a debilitating disease that initially paralysed him from the neck down. He recovered sufficiently to write a book on the subject, A Solitary Confinement, and also to use his experience of running and using hotels while suffering from such a disability to launch the Bespoke Access Awards.

According to Sheppard, the awards, launched in 2016 and run in tandem with the Royal Institute of British Architects, are an attempt to “change hearts and minds among architects and designers, turn hotel bedrooms and public areas into less-functional and hospitalised spaces, and inject delight and surprise.”

They were “devised with the intention of finding ways for all hotel guests to have a better experience, and to upgrade the status of the disabled guest from a ‘lack of empathy’ to one of ‘joy’.”

Sheppard recognises that the battle will be a long one. “Such changes invariably take time and the initiative did not begin with short-term aspirations in mind. We were under no illusions as to the speed of impact of the awards, but rather believed in the benefits that would arise from providing a spark for the future of the hotel industry, as well as the people that design buildings, products and services around it.”