Two Hotels In One Building

St. Giles Wembly Hotel and Cititel Express were opened in Penang recently. Both hotels occupied the same building. St. Giles Wembly's entrance is at Magazine Road (Jalan Magazine) and Cititel Express's entrance is at Noordin Street (Lebuh Noordin). (See map below.)

The ramp to enter St. Giles Wembly is as shown in the photo below. The ramp appeared to be steep and there is only handrail at one side of the ramp.

The ramp to enter Cititel Express are shown in the photos below.

The multi-storey car park has a few accessible car parks and one of them was located next to the lift. (Photo below.)

The accessible toilet at St. Giles Wembly was located at the lobby and could be found easily. It was big and bright and quite expensively docorated. The only thing I didn't like was the location of the basin. (See photos below.) It is not good for people who use side-transfer.

The accessible toilet of Cititel Express was quite a distance from the lobby and hidden behind a wooden door. A friendly receptionist led me all the way to the toilet. We had to go up a ramp and then past a long corridor before we could reach it. Then we found that the toilet was locked and she could not locate the person who had the key. I ended up using the one at St. Giles Wembly.

I encountered an irritating problem when I was at the hotels. The floor from one part of the building to another part are often not jointed smoothly. The small front wheels of my wheelchair got stuck a few times and I had to "reverse" (moving back to front) so that I could use the big hind wheels to overcoming the problems. Here are some photos to illustrate my point.

Conclusion: All new buildings in Penang are beginning to have facilities for wheelchair users. This is a good trend. But the designs of these facilities still have room for further improvements.