CLAIRE & GEORGE Hotelspitex
Founded in 2013, the Claire & George Foundation is a non-profit organisation which provides individual holidays for people with handicaps or special needs in barrierfree hotels in Switzerland, based on home care services – Spitex – and other forms of support. The Foundation sees itself as being a centre for expertise, as well as a brokerage and marketing platform between customers, the hotel industry and suppliers of out-patient care and related services. Claire & George Hotelspitex – Claire & George Hotel Home Care – is a service, first of all, from which anyone can benefit who stands in need of help in view of their age or condition, if they have suffered an accident or have special needs. At the same time, it is also addressed to the friends and families of such people. The aim is to make it possible for them to enjoy shared holidays again. Time out from work and the everyday routine is important – this is a need that all people share. Claire & George does not charge any brokerage fees. The foundation is financed entirely from income received in the form of commissions, from partnerships and donations.
Comments of the nominators
Launched by Susanne Gäumann on the basis of her own personal experience, and made a reality through her massive commitment, the Foundation allows people with special needs, together with their families and friends, to enjoy individual holidays in keeping with their requirements. These holidays are affordable by young and old in every life situation, and are open to all. This totally simple but at the same time cleverly thought – out service is a highly effective solution to a real problem.
Comments of the jury
There are objects and services which strike one as so essential, so sensible and so obviously useful that you are inclined to think they must always have existed. This category is where Claire & George Hotelspitex belongs. This innovative and – to use a somewhat old-fashioned, but here wholly appropriate term – beneficent service responds to a real social need, the significance of which will in all probability continue to grow in coming years. Making it possible for people with special needs to take holidays in ordinary hotels, rather than forcing them into specialist institutions, is a valuable achievement in terms of practical social integration – an object to which mere lip service has too frequently been paid in the past. As the mediating organisation, Claire & George creates a win-win situation for all the parties involved. The project adroitly makes use of existing structures like the Swiss Hotel Association and Spitex home care services, combining them in such a way as to give rise to a new kind of service. This is in every way a shining example of systematic planning and conceptual design. PS The jury is delighted with the idea that soon people from Basel, say, may be able to travel to the Ticino with the Giruno train, to spend a holiday there that they have booked through Claire & George!
More projects from edition 2017
