(Ireland) Hotels accommodating children with ASD; "one in 20 children today has an autism diagnosis"
- The end of childhood
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Nov 2, 2025, Irish Times: Hotels catering for families with autistic children: ‘Nobody looks or stares at you’
When Melanie* travelled abroad in July for a family holiday to Mallorca, Spain, with her six-year-old son Luke*, she found Dublin Airport stressful.
Originally from Slovakia, Melanie, who works in finance, and her Irish-born husband have younger children – two-year-old twins – but Luke has profound autism and finds airports challenging.
“You’re always worried there will be delays. You’re worried the plane could be sitting on the tarmacadam for three hours. If I have to keep him on a plane for five hours, he will probably walk off the plane. It’s too much,” she says.
Luke has limited verbal skills and, in common with many autistic children, a tendency to abscond. “He runs away if he feels like it. One year when we were abroad we had to move chairs and luggage to block the door. The same goes for balconies.”
Dining on holidays is difficult. “He’s very limited with his diet. He will eat chips or bologna sauce but the one I make because that’s the one he knows,” Melanie says.
“So there’s anxiety around food because the food needs to be always the same. If it’s too much for him, he will lie down on the floor. It doesn’t matter where you are, he will just lie down. For us, it’s much easier to stay in Ireland.”
For some families with autistic children, going on a break can feel harder than being at home. Lack of predictability, absence of routine and the anxieties and stress that may come with meltdowns in public settings can result in families avoiding holidays altogether.
But as awareness has improved – it’s estimated one in 20 children in school today has an autism diagnosis – more hotels are retraining staff and improving facilities to cater to families with diverse needs.
Adam Harris, of the autism charity AsIAm, which is working with hotels on training and awareness, says: “There’s an important momentum gathering. Contributing to that is our autism-friendly town initiative. Clonakilty, Maynooth, Drumcondra, Killarney and Waterford city have achieved the standard. Dublin city is working towards it.
“There’s huge momentum and hotels are at the table in that regard. We’re in the process of doing accreditation with the whole iNua group,” which is Ireland’s largest regional hotel group, “so that’s exciting.”
In Dublin, the Ashling Hotel on Parkgate Street, situated near the Zoo in the Phoenix Park and close to hospitals including St James’s, has 11 family rooms.
Since 2023, one of these has been transformed into a sensory room, which is kitted out with mood cubes, weighted blankets, vibrating pillows and low levels of lighting.
Ciara Barry of the Ashling says: “Some autistic people are sensitive to light, others to noise, others to touch. They’re able to sit down and just hug the pillow and it calms their nervous system.”
Ashling staff have also received autism awareness training and the hotel endeavours to keep the same managers on rotation to welcome returning autistic children so they see a face they know.
“They’re not just upgrades that we’ve done, they’re meaningful experiences for people under sometimes tough circumstances,” Barry says.
The room rate (from around €260 for a family room per night) is the same as for other family rooms in the hotel, an important factor given it is estimated that it costs an additional €28,000 a year to raise an autistic child. . . .
“We were the first hotel in Dublin, but I linked up with the Pillo hotel in Meath – they were one of the first to implement a sensory bedroom – and the Radisson in Sligo have also done it,” Barry says. ]
The hotel also worked with Keith O’Grady from Sensory House Ireland, which specialises in designing playrooms featuring everything from memory-foam bean bags to weighted teddy bears, lighted bubble tubes and projectors. These help to capture and regulate attention spans.
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