Travelodge admits security failure after couple woken by stranger in room

Kim Hutchison woke to the sound of a door clicking open in the darkness. She sat up in bed at the Travelodge in Dundee and saw a man standing at the foot of the mattress, wearing nothing but shorts, holding what looked like a key card. It was just after two in the morning on July 11th. The 60-year-old florist from Buckie, Moray, felt her chest tighten. She was, by her own account, absolutely petrified.

The man insisted the room was his—room 316, he kept saying. Hutchison and her partner Harry Grieve, 57, told him he was wrong; they were in 313. After less than a minute of tense back-and-forth, some of it punctuated by swearing, the stranger left. Grieve got dressed and went downstairs to find out how this had happened. The reception desk was empty. Police arrived later that night in response to another disturbance call, though no arrests were made. The couple pushed a chair against their door and tried to sleep.

What had occurred was straightforward and terrifying in its simplicity: Travelodge staff had given the man a key card to the wrong room. The hotel chain later acknowledged the breach, admitting that its updated security protocols had not been followed. The couple cut their weekend short and drove back home to Aberdeenshire. It took two weeks for Travelodge to contact them. When they finally did, the company offered a refund and a £100 voucher—compensation that Grieve said he doubted they would ever use.

The incident might have remained a private misfortune had it not been for something else the couple read online. In December 2022, a man named Kyran Smith had walked into a Travelodge in Maidenhead in the early hours of the morning and told staff he was the boyfriend of a woman sleeping in one of the rooms. The staff gave him her room number and a key card. Smith sexually assaulted the woman in her bed. He was later jailed. When Hutchison and Grieve learned of this case, they decided their story needed to be told. They contacted the BBC.

Travelodge's security failures were not isolated. The hotel chain had already begun investigating additional reports of unauthorized room access. Two other women had come forward separately to describe strangers entering their rooms while they were alone. The pattern suggested something systemic—not a single lapse but a recurring failure in how the company trained staff to verify guest identity and distribute key cards.

In a statement, Travelodge said it was "very sorry" and that customer safety was a priority. The company acknowledged that unauthorized room access was "a significant cause for concern" and should never happen. It said the updated security policies had not been correctly followed in the Dundee incident and that staff at that location had been retrained on room security and check-in procedures. But the statement also noted that a broader safety review, previously announced, remained ongoing—suggesting the work of fixing the problem was far from complete.

Greive spoke to the weight of what could have happened. "It could have been so much worse," he said. "The potential for what could have happened is huge. It could have been anybody accessing the room, it could have been a female in the room on her own." He and Hutchison had been fortunate. The man who entered their room left when confronted. But the vulnerability they experienced—the knowledge that a locked hotel door had offered no real protection—was real. And the fact that a similar breach had led to sexual assault elsewhere in the same hotel chain made their fear not paranoia but reasonable caution. They spoke out, they said, hoping Travelodge would finally get it right, and that no one else would have to wake up to a stranger in their room.