Accessible Hospitality Alliance (aha) has announced that the next aha Forum, in Partnership with Thomas Franks, will take place on the 34th floor of the BT Tower in London on Wednesday 11 November 2026.
From the summit of the BT Tower, the Forum will convene hospitality and catering operators, people with lived experience of barriers to hospitality, and service partners to further examine how accessibility can be transformed into practical progress.
Previous aha Forums have demonstrated conversations taking place in the room stimulate new thinking, create relationships, and lead to actions that continue beyond the events.
Robin Sheppard, Co-Founder and Chair, Accessible Hospitality Alliance, said of the announcement: “We are incredibly grateful to BT and Thomas Franks for the opportunity to stage our next forum within one of London’s most recognised architectural landmarks.
“The location will bring the aha community together to continue conversations already underway, explore how much further they can go, and set our collective sights accordingly high.”
The Forum’s keynote speaker will be Dr Irene Di Giulio PhD of King’s College London, whose work with the European Space Agency is contributing to one of the most ambitious developments in human endeavour, extending space travel to people with physical disabilities.
Her work includes conducting one of the most integrated spaceflight experiments with ESA astronaut John McFall, to become the first person with a physical disability to be cleared for take-off on a mission into space.
The mission sees McFall and three other astronauts board a SpaceX, Falcon 9 Rocket currently scheduled to take off in Q1 next year, to dock with the world’s first ever commercial space station Haven – 1, and stay there for two weeks.
The setting and keynote speaker combine to make this a significant moment in the development of the aha Forum. The BT Tower has represented communications, engineering and technological ambition on the London skyline for generations, it will now fittingly host a conversation involving work taking place at the very frontier of human ingenuity.
Yet the purpose of the Forum remains firmly grounded in accessible hospitality.
Alongside Dr Di Giulio’s keynote, discussions will once again be shaped by people whose lived experience of barriers to hospitality must remain central to making hospitality and catering more accessible to guests and colleagues.
Frank Bothwell, Founder, Thomas Franks reflected on the forthcoming forum saying: “Hospitality is built on the simple idea of a warm welcome. But a welcome means very little if not everyone can walk through the door.
“The work of the Accessible Hospitality Alliance is about removing those barriers, raising our collective ambition and creating an industry where opportunity has no ceiling.
“As we sit amongst the clouds at the top of the BT Tower, it will feel like a particularly special place to look up, think bigger, and ask just how far we can go.”
The ambition is not simply to create a memorable day, it is to enable further conversations, ask difficult questions, and enable action to flow.
The Forum is currently open exclusively to members of Accessible Hospitality Alliance. Should a limited number of additional places become available, details will be announced nearer the event.
The aha Forum, in Partnership with Thomas Franks
Wednesday 11 November 2026
34th Floor, BT Tower, London