Travelodge assault victim ‘shocked’ guests’ consent not needed over room keys
The 31 year old was attacked at a hotel in Maidenhead in December 2022
A woman who was sexually assaulted at a Travelodge has said it “shocked” her when the hotel chain said its staff would now start asking for guests’ consent before handing their room’s key to people requesting it.
The 31-year-old survivor from Berkshire, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked by Kyran Smith at a Travelodge in Maidenhead after he had been given a key card to her room by the hotel’s reception.
Smith, from Surrey, was jailed in February for seven-and-a-half years following the attack in December 2022.
The survivor, who met executives from the budget hotel chain last week, told the Press Association: “I feel like when you go abroad you always have to say who’s staying in the room.
“I feel like it should be like that more, you should know exactly who’s staying in the room.
“And I get that there might be situations where someone additional is staying, but then if that person is additionally staying, if they need to request a room key, then you get the consent from the person in the room.
“So it did shock me when Travelodge did say that now they’ll get consent from the person in the room.
“I was thinking: ‘Wow, it’s quite surprising that you weren’t doing that before’.”
The woman called for legislation on hotel room security, saying guest safety “definitely needs to be looked at more”.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wrote to Travelodge’s chief executive Jo Boydell saying he was “very concerned” after she cancelled a meeting with MPs about the “utterly appalling” assault.
The survivor said: “I find that (the cancellation) quite surprising because, in my opinion, if you’re the CEO of a company, then you should be doing absolutely everything to prove that you are listening to the situation, taking it on board, doing the right thing.
“I know she didn’t go to the meeting with the MPs.
“To me that’s quite surprising because you’re saying that, you know, your hotels’ guests’ security is top of your priorities and that kind of thing, but then you’re not willing to go into those kind of meetings to talk about it and actually say, you know, ‘This is actually what we’re going to do, this is how we’re going to implement policies’.”
The woman said Travelodge executives only contacted her earlier in March, more than three years after the assault, after she told her story to the BBC.
Speaking of the executives, she told PA: “They didn’t contact me until literally this month.
“And then I know they like to kind of say ‘Oh, we’re taking immediate action’, but the action is only because it’s out there, and there’s reputational damage for them.
“It’s not necessarily because they heard about it and thought ‘That’s awful, we should contact her and see how she is’.
“From my opinion it’s quite slow progress from them.”
She added: “I don’t really feel like they’ve done that much, because all they’ve so far said is a lot of ‘Yeah, we handled it badly’ and very much saying ‘Yeah, we’ll get consent now’.
“But that’s so vague, I mean, what does that mean? You have to specify what that means, I think.”
The survivor said Travelodge offered her a £30 refund when she reported the assault in 2023.
Ms Boydell apologised to the victim in a statement earlier in March, and said on Monday the company is handling the situation with “the utmost seriousness”.
She said: “We have made some immediate changes to our room access security policy and have 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 security procedures and the lessons we can learn from how this incident was handled.
“We will also be appointing a leading violence against women and girls expert who can work closely with the KC on the review.
“We have offered that all MPs interested in this important issue can feed into the independent review in writing so their contributions can be fully taken into account.”
Ms Boydell added: “Our immediate priority is to progress this important work at pace, progressing our independent review and further strengthening our processes.”