‘Sarah’ is still traumatised by the incident, which saw a drunk member of the public easily get hold of a keycard to her room, as Good Morning Britain Correspondent Ashna Hurynag reports
A woman who had her room accessed by a stranger with a key card has been left traumatised, after he barged in on her naked although she had locked the door.
‘Sarah’, whose identity we are protecting, had been staying in a Travelodge in York in June 2025 for a work conference.
She had finished for the day and was looking forward to a relaxing evening, but was harassed in the lobby as she was heading up to her room
“There’s a group of men in fancy dress, they’ve been drinking and they’re making comments to me and whistling, saying, I’m sexy,” she recalled.
“One of them said in my face – ‘You are so gorgeous’.”
She ignored them and went up to her room: “I just sort of rolled my eyes. I went up to my room, but I heard him shout my room number to his friend, that worried me, so I locked the door.”
Sarah rang her husband who put her mind at ease, and began to get ready to have a bath.
But as she was undressed, the door swung open.
“I’m about to go in the bath, and that same man who told me I was gorgeous, entered my room,” she said.
“He opened the door, and I screamed so loud. I ran forward and was able to shut the door on him, but he didn’t leave. He was on the other side of the door, telling me to be quiet, telling me to calm down. And I just kept screaming.”
Sarah was utterly distraught, and so terrified she had a panic attack.
There was no phone in the room, so she searched for the number online and tried to call reception three times. There was no answer so she rang the police.
The police operator consoled her and asked her to stay on the line as she got dressed and went down to reception.
Gobsmacked, she demanded to know how the individual had managed to get a key to her room.
“He, he just asked for it. He just went to reception and said, ‘Can I have a key for this number?’ And they knew he was a guest at the hotel, because they’d seen him, and they just said, ‘Yeah, here it is’ and gave it to him.”
“So he doesn’t know my name, he didn’t give my name on the booking, there were no checks, no questions,” says Sarah.
Staff on the desk apologised, and she was offered a partial refund of £70, which was upped to just over £100 following Sarah writing a formal complaint.
But she says this is not about the cost, but rather the principle.
“He saw me naked, and the fact that he was just given this key with such ease…what was his intention? That is something that I think about a lot.
“He shouted at me and told me I was sexy. He shouted out my room number. He walked downstairs, got a key. What was he hoping to achieve?”
This incident happened two and a half years after a woman staying at the Travelodge in Maidenhead was sexually assaulted by a man who had lied to staff to get a key to her room.
Upon reading about the perpetrator’s high-profile conviction in February, Sarah assumed this had happened after her traumatic experience, only to learn it was not.
I asked her how she felt discovering the Maidenhead crime happened in December 2022, years after her incident: “I just sobbed.”
“I sobbed because I feel for that woman, because not only did she go through something horrific, but no lessons were learned from it. Why?
“Why was that allowed to happen? Why didn’t they even ask what’s her name on the booking, you know, oh, let’s just type in that room and see who’s there – small things; this is a basic requirement. I’ve locked the door in my hotel room. I should be safe, and I wasn’t.”
Sarah is now one of a growing list of women pursuing legal claims against the corporation and other hotels.
Travelodge have admitted their room access security policies were not sufficient at the time of these incidents.
We understand the member of staff involved in what happened to Sarah no longer works for the business.
In a statement, Travelodge told us: “We are very sorry for this customer’s experience. Any case of an unauthorised person entering a guest’s room is a significant cause for concern, and we want to be clear that this should not have happened – our room access security policies at the time were not correctly followed, which is not acceptable.
“We would like to apologise again to the customer for their experience with us.
“We have recently made changes to strengthen our room access security policies and incident escalation procedures. This includes ensuring that any additional or replacement room keys are only issued with explicit permission from the person (or people) staying in the room, and this has been rolled out to all of our hotels, supported by training on our room access security and check-in procedures for our 12,000 customer-facing colleagues.
“We have also commissioned an independent review led by Paul Greaney KC, a leading barrister specialising in public inquiries concerning security, serious violent crime, and health and safety, to examine our room access security policies and escalation procedures.
“In parallel to the independent review, which is underway, we are working at pace on a further internal review of our room access security processes and training, including working with a leading violence against women and girls expert, to ensure our guests are safe and feel safe in our hotels.”
They tell us their external review is progressing at pace.
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