At the weekend, myself and three of my best girlfriends went for a bit of a pamper at the Fairlawns spa in Aldridge, Walsall. I wanted to write about the experience as I thought a positive post would be nice to write.

We had an excellent time! It was really super and just what all four of us needed and we had a good catch up, laugh as well as pampering ourselves to the full extent that the spa provided.

We were really looked after by the staff at the spa and I have to tell you about it.

I first noticed the level of deaf awareness when I was e mailing the spa to arrange booking. They were very good at using e mail to communicate with me, even finding a way for me to pay the bill by e mail. Normally, businesses prefer to conduct business over the phone, especially where money is concerned and then even then, they want to speak to the person who’s name is on the card. I cannot use the phone, so this often means I gain a new little bald spot on my head every time I have to do something like this as they don’t like someone else to speak on my behalf.

But Fairlawns were brilliant, they let me communicate by e mail and even mailed me a couple of weeks prior to our stay to ask a few questions about our disability so they could put in place a procedure in case of an emergency, already working out that we would be unable to hear any alarm.

I’m not sure if it is just that they are either extremely aware of disabilities, deafness in particular and the different needs that stem from them, or if they perhaps have had a Deaf guest before so have experience, but this really impressed me as it meant that I didn’t need to do any thinking, or go the extra mile to make sure they were aware of what consequences there are to have 4 deaf women staying in a hotel.

When we arrived, I was given a letter from the manager, with details of what would happen if there was an alarm during the night. The on site manager would come to our rooms and flick the light on and off to alert us. Excellent. The staff were also clear, friendly and patient with us right from the start, we couldn’t fault them.

We were shown round by a member of staff who made sure she faced us when she spoke to us, gave us an opportunity to look at where she was pointing before she spoke to tell us what she was pointing at. The lovely guy who took our orders in the (very posh) restaurant was great, really clear to understand and at one point spotted that we were unsure about parts of the menu, and came over and offered to explain which was great as it can be hard to approach staff sometimes for fear of understanding them especially in noisy environments like restaurants.

Everything was written down for us, the mud ritual experience that we opted to take part in as part of our spa package was explained to us carefully as well as paper provided with it all written down, what we had to do which was a huge help as we had no hearing aids in at this point due to the nature of the ritual and damage that would definitely have been caused to them by the mud, steam and water involved. We felt extremely cared for and we will definitely be going back.

I have written to them, to thank the staff for our fantastic stay. It’s always such a pleasure to meet an organisation that know what to do and how to deal with needs such as ours. Although most places do not have a problem putting procedures and operations in place to help a group of people such as us, it is usually us that has to tell them what needs to be done, so it was very refreshing to go somewhere where we didn’t need to do this.

5 stars for Fairlawns, they’re recommended 😀