Anyone work in a Premier Inn?

Sorry OP you need to get used to the idea he is an adult legally. If you were away with a friend and she did not answer the door to you, the hotel staff would have no right to let you in to her room.
I know you had great intentions, but staff do not know that. So they have to stick to the law.

Sorry lots of spelling errors but I hope you get the gist

You should have kept his keycard!

I have 2 sensible teens but they love sleeping in. So when we stay at a hotel (yes breaking booking gets as they're both under 18) we book 2 rooms with one adult be child in each. But we request rooms next to each other and H & I stay in one and the children stay in the other. I keep the keycard for their room so I can go in when I want. But basically to wake them up in the morning!!

True

I said men because the post is about a man 🤦‍♀️

Your situation may have been urgent but it wasn't an emergency. An emergency would justify a 999 call and police or fire service could break door down. If staff have access to a key which could over-ride a door locked on the inside then security for all hotel guests is compromised. Now that you know how deeply your DS sleeps you can have a backup plan.

Why on earth are you bringing "men" into it?

When DD was around 16 she would sleep so soundly that I was genuinely worried she'd one day be killed in a house fire - there is a smoke alarm within inches of her (then) bedroom door and when it once malfunctioned and went off for at least 5 minutes, she never even stirred.

She would also regularly sleep through her alarm even though it was so loud it would wake everyone else in the house.

The most sensible explanation on the thread.

@Funnywonder so we agree. It's for the parents to figure out the nuances of their 18 year olds. The point of the wages is you can't expect a minimum wage employee to apply nuance. Not that they're not capable, they're just not compensated for the fallout from those decisions.

Someone mentioned up thread and I think it's worth highlighting there a multiple occasions (all of which I experienced) where letting someone in another person's hotel room is a bad idea -

Domestic abuse - this can be parents as well as partners
Teenagers being used for drug trafficking
Exes hunting down exes
Prostitues using the room and unwelcome clients attempting to return (these often check in together, so would be easy to act as a boyfriend!)
Drug dealers posing as family to get to those owing money

And so many more. I know this will sound mental to most people, but the rules are strict for very very good reasons. Staff cannot open adult hotel rooms and enter them because someone outside wants them to.

If the rooms don't lock internally staff still aren't allowed to open them, unless in an emergency. An emergency would be, after check out time, no answer to repeated calls and knocks at the door. Then staff either enter, as per policy of the hotel, or they call the police if they physically can't open the door. Then they hope against hope the person inside is simply asleep and not overdosed.

You as in you general ...

Where did I say it was the responsibility of hotel staff to use nuanced thinking? I was talking about YOU. I was pointing out that it's probably not wise to generalise about the maturity or otherwise of 18 year olds. In their state as newly fledged adults. Maybe best not to leave them in a hotel room while you fly home just to teach them a life lesson.

Also, what on earth does anyone's wage have to do with it?

How do people well men sleep like this

I’m pretty sure that none of those things would stop a motivated firefighter. 🤣 They are all well trained in how to get a door down when needed. Use the deadbolt it will stop someone given a duplicate card key by mistake but not the firefighter or police.

Let's say your teenage daughter was raped by someone abusing the emergency access. You'd be screaming that no one should be able to gain access to a locked hotel room. You can't have it both ways.

Oversleeping isn't an emergency.

As everyone has pointed out, emergency access can be abused and requires hard-pressed staff to make finely balanced judgements about what constitutes an emergency.

The solution for next time is to book a hotel that allows you a separate keycard to each other's rooms at check-in.

Great example of the downside. That Germanwings incident was horrific. The despair they had in trying to open up the door (think the recording of it was made public).

Putting a stopper on a door in a hotel is risky in case of an emergency. Personally I wouldn't.

Horrible situation all round.

Think you're getting a hard time op. Not a Premier Inn but a hotel in Venice. We'd taken my mum and she'd not responded to knocks on the door. It was terrifying and I had to ask management to open her door as I was terrified something was wrong. She'd forgotten to put her hearing aids in so couldn't hear the door. I was grateful we could check on her.

Eldest DS also slept through his alarm when we'd gone to collect him from uni on the way to Luton airport. We had to get security to wake him up. We just made our flight. We now call it the Bratislava incident! 😂

Next time he gets the "privilege" of staying in a family room then, no one needs this BS on checking out

It is a dilemma. Security on one hand, but inaccessibility on the other.

I stayed at the Premier Inn in Ealing this year but didn't even notice you could lock it from the inside (soon as I entered room I was more interested at seeing the view from my window and getting my first glimpse of Wembley Stadium).

Just glad your son was fine though OP.

In a premier inn you can stay in a room on your own from aged 16

This. I wouldn’t want any manager or employee to be able to enter a room I’m sleeping in alone at night. I have no idea how trustworthy they are or how predatory they might be.

You're quite right I didn't. Never had a post deleted in 20 years on here so there's always a first. I meant origin as in background, random blokes being able to gain access to a woman's room, nothing to do with race whatsoever. I worked in hotels for years which is why I say it, it's low paid, itinerate work with high staff turnover. It can be very shady.

@Funnywonder it's not for minimum wage hotel staff to change rules on the basis of nuance. If you can't trust your 18 year old to wake up or cope independently don't have them in a room alone.

The risk of not being roused or rescued in an emergency, bothers me a lot more.

I'm pretty sure Premier Inns have fire alarms that would wake the dead. Maybe OP should have set it off to get her DS to wake up. 🤷‍♂️

The thing is, every security system has a downside. Either it can be overridden, in which case you need to trust the people who can override it, or it can't, in which case the people using it have to take appropriate precautions. After 9/11 we got airliner cockpit doors that can't be opened from outside by anybody and then we had the Germanwings incident where the suicidal first officer locked the captain out. Most phones have a secure encryption feature where if you forget the PIN you are absolutely screwed, and I can promise you that dozens of people every day set this up and then forget the PIN overnight.

From what I've seen of the OP's case, she knew DS was a heavy sleeper, so she should probably have instructed him not to lock himself in, in case he needed to be wakened. Yes, that would reduce his security, but those are the trade-offs you sometimes need to make when you're in a slightly unusual situation for one night such as jetting off on holiday. Kind of like when you get to the airport at the other end and the taxi doesn't have rear seat belts.