ABSTRACT
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an increasingly prevalent neurodevelopmental condition, and individuals with ASD and their families face myriad barriers in their lives. Research has categorized such barriers as relating to social safety and physical safety in a leisure setting, and barriers of both types are common in hotels. Nevertheless, many of the protocols that hotels introduced to promote health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., online check-in, reduced capacity public spaces, and wayfinding signage) have inadvertently created a hotel experience that mitigates many of the challenges that hotels pose for guests with ASD and their families. This chapter details how various protocol modifications have fostered a hotel design that is more ASD-friendly in terms of both social and physical safety. It is suggested that hotels take advantage of such circumstances by 64finding ways to maintain these protocols postpandemic to facilitate tourism opportunities for individuals with ASD and their families, giving the hotels a potentially lucrative competitive advantage.
