Globally, the ratio of disabled-friendly hotel rooms to a total number of hotel rooms is 1:50. In India, however, the ratio is 1:250 (Director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People).

During the annual Urs Mubarak festival, thousands of visually-impaired pilgrims visit the holy shrine Ajmer Shareef in the city of Ajmer, Rajasthan, with the hope that they would be blessed with sight. In spite of the accommodation discomfort that follows, these patrons visit every year, with an unwavering faith.

Situated in proximity to the holy shrine, Hotel Ramada realised this discomfort and wanted to come up with a solution that would ensure a comfortable stay for its guests and establish Ramada as a customer-first brand. As visually-impaired people have immense self-respect and pride, the solution had to make them feel self-reliant, but without incurring any major infrastructural changes at the hotel property.

The Blind Faith Upgrade is an offering by Hotel Ramada that consists of an easy-to-assemble kit to transform any hotel room into a visually-impaired-friendly room. Launched during the annual Urs Mubarak festival by Hotel Ramada, Ajmer, the Upgrade is available for purchase on www.theblindfaithupgrade.com and consists of a kit with:

- Reusable tactile-paving tiles to help orientate the guests from the hotel and its surroundings to the location of the shrine.

- Braille literature with an audio assist pen that uses Optical Identification to convert written language into audio.

- Braille-enabled labels which convert any phone into a braille-enabled phone.

The Upgrade requires zero infrastructural modifications at the property and has the potential to transform all 202,963 hotel rooms in India into visually-impaired-friendly rooms, as and when required.

Hotel Ramada itself is committed to offering the Upgrade across its remaining 29 hotels in the country.