Hospitality Readiness · ADA Title III

Your guests can check in on any floor.
Can they all get out?

A hotel is a public accommodation. Under the ADA you're obligated to have a way to evacuate a mobility-impaired guest when the elevators lock out — and most hotels have a line in a binder and nothing in the stairwell. Outpost closes that gap: the chair, the sling, the trained night crew, and the documentation, in one deployment.

What you answer to

The obligation is on you — whether or not there's a chair in the stairwell.

ADA Title III · 28 CFR 36
You must modify your evacuation plan

DOJ's Title III manual (§III-4.2100): a public accommodation “is obligated to modify its evacuation procedures… to provide alternative means for clients with mobility impairments to be safely evacuated.”

DOJ enforcement
It's been enforced at scale

The nationwide Hilton consent decree (2010, ~900 hotels) required staff training on emergency procedures for guests with disabilities; the Bass Hotels settlement was the first of its kind.

NFPA 101 · IBC §1009
Refuge — or a way down

Areas of refuge aren't required in fully-sprinklered high-rise hotels, which is exactly why assisted stairwell descent is the fallback that has to actually work.

Why it matters — the history that wrote the codes

Every hotel fire that rewrote the rules has the same shape: people cut off above the fire.

MGM Grand
1980 · Las Vegas
Smoke filled the tower's stairwells

Guests on the upper floors of the 21-story tower were cut off when smoke poured through the stairwells and air ducts. The disaster that drove modern high-rise sprinkler and egress law.

Winecoff
1946 · Atlanta
One stairway, acting as a chimney

The “fireproof” 15-story hotel had a single interior stairway and no fire escapes; ladders reached only the 8th floor. It catalyzed modern life-safety codes.

Dupont Plaza
1986 · San Juan
When the way out fails

Locked exits turned an escapable fire into an entrapment — the enduring lesson that the people who can't move fast are the ones who don't get out.

It isn't just history. In 2024, an elevator fire forced a 2:30 a.m. guest evacuation at a Las Vegas high-rise hotel — elevators lock out, everyone takes the stairs. And 78% of older travelers who need accommodations need them for mobility (AARP, 2024): your guest mix is getting less ambulatory, not more.
What readiness looks like

Nothing undoes these losses. But every one ends the same way — people who couldn't take the stairs, with no way down once the elevators shut off. A stairway evacuation chair in every guest-floor stairwell, and a transfer sling to reach the guest who can't get to it, is the capability that gives those people a path to the exit. That readiness is the entire reason Outpost exists.

Sources: NFPA / USFA investigation reports; contemporary reporting. Framed as vertical-egress failure; we never claim specific victims were disabled.

The proof a chair changes the outcome
Case study · high-rise tower

Carried down 69 floors — and lived.

On 9/11, John Abruzzo, a quadriplegic Port Authority accountant, was on the 69th floor of the North Tower. Colleagues placed him in a stairway evacuation chair and took turns carrying him down all 69 flights in about ninety minutes. He survived. In the 1993 bombing — before the chairs were staged — the same descent took roughly six hours. One piece of equipment in the stairwell was the difference.

Confirmed by the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Shown as a high-rise tower analog.
What we deploy

Equipment, training, and proof — in one deployment.

  • HALO evacuation chairs
    One per guest-floor stairwell — the manual Swift for a typical tower, the powered Power where a high-rise needs ascent as well as descent.
  • ProMove transfer slings
    So your night crew can move a guest who can't self-transfer into the chair — safely, with dignity, without lifting.
  • Hands-on staff training
    Every shift practices with the real equipment on your actual stairs — certified and logged.
  • Outpost Go-Bag & SunCase
    Staged at the front desk / fire command point: light, gloves, route-marking, and backup power that keeps a Power chair and comms running.
  • Quarterly drills
    Scheduled, documented drills that keep the capability real between inspections.
  • 12-month audit log
    The binder an ADA reviewer, fire marshal, or insurer asks for — dates, names, serials, signatures.
Free one-pager

Get the Hotel readiness flyer

The obligation, the highlights, and a stairwell-readiness checklist — on one page you can forward to your team. We'll email it now.

Free · emailed instantly · we reply from drew@outpostprep.com.
Coverage Designer · Hospitality Readiness

Build your coverage in 30 seconds

Set your building, pick your chairs, and watch three tiers of coverage price themselves.

Live estimate

The ADA expects a way down for every mobility-impaired guest — a chair in each guest-floor stairwell is the baseline.

How many guest-floor stairwells?
2
How many guest floors?
3
What best fits your stairs & passengers?
Add to the plan?
Your build
2 guest-floor stairwells × 3 guest floors · HALO Swift
Your three tiers of coverage
Baseline
2chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
One chair per stairwell — the compliance baseline.
★ Recommended
Recommended
4chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
Adds coverage on your upper floors so no one waits long.
Full
6chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
A chair on every floor of every stairwell — nobody waits.
We'll email your numbered estimate in seconds — no call required.

Estimate only — final counts confirmed on your walkthrough. Chairs & slings are quoted; Go-Bags and SunCase are priced online.

Tell us the property. We'll send the spec.

One-page spec and a fixed price for your hotel — no call required.

Free · fixed-price spec · we reply from drew@outpostprep.com.