Amwaj Rotana, located along Jumeirah Beach Residence in new Dubai, has enrolled 27 members of its team in a new programme to equip them with skills on how to better cater to the needs of guests with special needs.

Training topics cover the various types of special needs, general etiquette to follow for interaction, features of the rooms designed for them and most importantly, handling emergency evacuation procedures for such guests.

"As Dubai is rapidly developing and welcoming more and more visitors of diverse backgrounds and needs, we felt that it was essential to take our talents to another level, especially after recently upgrading several of our rooms to cater to guests with special needs," said Mark Deere, general manager of Amwaj Rotana. He continues to add that the hotel has welcomed a number of guests with special needs in recent times.

In addition to the training, team members enrolled in the course were also taught sign language. According to a factsheet published by the World Health Organisation, over 5 per cent of the world’s population amounting to approximately 360 million people have disabling hearing loss which created the necessity to cover sign language as one of the areas of development for the team.

As a start, the programme is running for team members who work directly with guests such as Housekeeping, Front Office, Laundry and the Health and Wellness Centre. Based on its success, it is expected that the programme may eventually be rolled out to other members of the hotel’s team of employees. - TradeArabia News Service