Woken by hotel staff

Well done for reporting it to the police. I heard of many crazy stories of lone women being targeted in hotels. This guy needs to be fired for doing this several times. What did the police say?

I went away with my 10yo DD recently, after settling in the room I placed our suitcases in front of the door, I’d opened one so if anyone tried opening the door it would get trapped and stop the door opening more than a few inches. My DD asked me what I was doing, I told her that when ever she stays in a hotel room always make sure you can block the door from opening. Obviously I didn’t want to scare her so I said sometimes hotels can mess up and put 2 different guests in the same room.

I’ve travelled the world on my own and I do this in every hotel, usually its a chair but I also use anything I can easily move in a fire but can still block the door from opening. Thankfully I’ve never had issues myself but know others who have, including friends entering their en-suite to find it was a shared bathroom with a couple of naked old people getting frisky in the bed facing their en-suite door.

You’ve done the right thing reporting to the police op.

Also agree with you on the you get what you pay for comment, you pay for a bed to sleep safely in for the night so you should never expect anyone walking in your room, especially staff. My go to hotels are premier inns, cheap, quiet and you know what your getting, in my experience usually great service.

What if any number of things happened? What have things that didnt happen got to do with anything?

As has been explained above if there was confusion at the reception and they thought that room was empty they would have needed to check the person who was in it. Absolutely not an excuse for what they did but you not being able to think of a reason doesnt mean there wasn't a simple one

All kinds of crappy things happen, businesses have systems that aren't fit for purpose and people are just bad at their jobs but it's thankfully very rare that anyone is in actual danger

I usually travel as a lone female. This is rather offputting.

What if he called you out of the room to supposedly confirm ur name but really he was taking a look at you to see if you was his type and then would’ve assaulted? It’s very strange behaviour, I can’t think of any reason why at night time they would need you to confirm ur name when you have paid for the room. This is very alarming, I know if this happened to me, I would’ve been petrified and unable to go back to sleep at all

I guess OP could log it but it sounds much more like something the hotel should be dealing with.

Hadn’t read this update before I posted. It’s always worth logging suspicious behaviour with police (not via 999 or emergency call out, obvs). It can be very helpful to them to identify patterns or as corroborating evidence.

I’m shocked at the number of stories of staff and guests entering rooms. I shall now always knock when entering a room for the first time and make sure I use the chain or a wedge.

If this is a frequent occurrence, and hotels don’t think it’s a big deal, a thief or sex predator could use it to their advantage.

I think the police should be notified, so they have a report logged. It’s their decision whether to investigate.

No hotel staff member should enter a room without knocking/permission at almost midnight. What would happen if she’d remained asleep or frozen and hadn’t asked them to leave?

And what if other guests have reported the same thing to the police (or worse still thefts, sexual assaults etc), and the hotel is unaware or hasn’t dealt with it properly, e.g. a certain manager is complicit? Better to log it.

For over 30 years my DH has wedged a chair or anything available under hotel doors overnight, home and abroad, and I have moaned at him for being ridiculous and potentially delaying escape in the event of fire etc. Following this thread I now stand corrected and owe him an apology. I’ve found all these recounts of intruders totally shocking and it undermines the image of a relaxing hotel stay. Very glad to have seen this thread and hope you get a decent apology and refund OP.

Agree . you are so good to be thinking of others . I knew who assaulted me (another guest an older boy) and I was too scared to:embarrassed to say anything as I thought I’d be in trouble (knowing my mother I would have been) but even though it was 40 years ago I still feel guilty thinking could I have prevented him doing it again, if he ever did do.

I'd go ahead and write the review. You're not saying anything untrue, and you might just save another lone woman from experiencing the same.

if you were raped they’d have said you consented!

I hate this kind of ridiculous assumption. You do realise you've just completely made this up don't you..

I would be LIVID OP!

That's quite the reach. I've stayed in Travelodges as a lone woman plenty of times without incident, if you want more anecdata.

The disabled guest thing is exactly right. TL do this all the time. Second staff member sleeps in vacant room as the team member allocated for the 'PEEP'. They might have come in to sleep then realised it was occupied. Room shown as vacant - confusion ensues. Return to room to verify who you are as they believe the room to be empty. They need to know who you are for fire risk.

Police won't care - Travelodge will probably refund you. They retain the right to enter your room so it's not a police matter at all.

If they have a disabled guest they have to have an additional member of staff in case of emergency, who normally gets their head down for the night unless needed.

Did you put the ‘do not disturb’ sign up? We do that unless we want the room cleaning.

We had a similar thing is Australia, we had the door chain on and someone tried to noisily get in in the middle of the night then at about 6am the alarm clock / radio went off really loudly.
Don’t recall even mentioning it to reception.

You'd be surprised at the absolute state of some key card systems.
Incredibly old card systems, you have to key in the room number and number of nights. Majority of time, keys are never done for correct amount of nights which is why if your card stops working during a hotel stay, that's the reason. It wasn't done correctly by staff. The machine will say to override any previous keys & you can just say yes.

For newer computer systems, if the key system is separate to the hotel reservation system, it's a quicker system but it wouldn't tell you the name of the guest or any other information. It's literally just to cut a key for the room.

Some hotels have invested in integrated systems where you will see the guest information on the key cutting system but out of over 25 years of working in hotels, I've only seen this in one hotel.

How was it repeat behaviour?

I used to work for them and I've accidently walked into an occupied room before, in the middle of the room. A guest had been checked into the system into room 40 (or whatever) but had actually been given the key for 41. I turned up for night shift had no idea. The system showed room 41 as vacant and ready, so I went straight in (guest had a broken TV remote and I went to get one from the 'empty' room to switch) Walked into a man in his bed at 2am. I was probably more scared than he was as a lone female worker.

Stuff like this happens a million times at Travelodge. I've walked into multiple occupied rooms due to mix ups, but only once at night like that.

Generally the smaller ones (under 100 rooms) operate on one lone worker for night shift so sending male/female staff to rooms for genuine reasons isn't possible.

But with the amount of errors made frequently I think most of them generally have a very inaccurate sense of which rooms are vacant and which are occupied - certainly if there are more than 40 rooms or so.

It's all much more manual than you'd expect and leaves huge margin for error.

It's not acceptable, but it's very unlikely to be sinister. I think most night staff at Travelodge are more scared for themselves than anything - we were all issued panic alarms etc but working completely alone in a hotel occupied by hundreds of people, at the side of a road, was always scary for me, especially when having to walk the corridors (a mandatory requirement every 2 hours).

Sounds like a nightmare OP. The CEO of Travelodge is Jo Boydell:

[email protected]

We stayed in PI in London, friends in the next room. We came back from evening out my friend and I went back up to the rooms and DH’s stayed in the bar. She rang me and asked me to come to their room. All their stuff had been moved into a pile and two extra single beds made up. We went to reception, staff member with little English asked why they hadn’t removed belongs if they had checked out, couldn’t get what we were saying.
We asked for someone to come to the room and get rid of the extra beds which happened about an hour later but all night they were expecting a family to walk in, so didn't get a proper nights sleep.

I haven't read full thread, just full OP. OP, post on Twitter to Travelodge. They should/will be thoroughly ashamed to have their extensive failings exposed in public, and so more likely to respond properly.