Travelodge guests were awoken to find a shirtless intruder in their room after he was wrongly handed a key card to their door, it has been revealed.
The couple from Buckie, Moray, were left terrified after waking up to discover a half-dressed stranger standing in their hotel room at a Dundee Travelodge.
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Kim Hutchison, 60, and her partner Harry Grieve, 57, were staying at the chain’s Strathmore Avenue branch when the incident occurred in the early hours of July 11.
Ms Hutchison described herself as “petrified” when she found the man at the foot of their bed, before he departed following a brief dispute over whose room it was.
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The budget hotel chain has since apologised and acknowledged that its room access security procedures were not properly adhered to.
The intrusion took place shortly after two o’clock in the morning. “I just woke up, I had heard the door click, and sat up in bed,” Ms Hutchison recalled.
“Here was a guy at the bottom of the bed, just standing with shorts on. He had something in his hand which I took to be the key card for the room.”
The florist said she attempted to remain composed despite being “absolutely petrified.”
A tense exchange followed, with the man insisting he was in room 316 while Ms Hutchison maintained they were in room 313.
“He was adamant it was his room. After a few polite words — I think I swore actually — he eventually went,” she said. “He must have been in the room for maybe just under a minute. It was scary, him being there.”
The pair estimated the intruder was in his mid-20s.
Mr Grieve dressed and headed downstairs to confront reception staff about how a stranger had gained entry to their room, but found the desk unmanned.
Officers from Police Scotland subsequently arrived at the hotel in connection with a separate disturbance reported around the same time. No arrests are understood to have been made.
With no reassurance forthcoming, the couple attempted to sleep for the remainder of the night after wedging a chair against their door.
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“We cut our weekend short and headed back to Buckie,” said Mr Grieve, who is employed at the St Fergus gas terminal near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.
The pair had travelled to Dundee to visit family members, but the unsettling experience brought their stay to an abrupt end.
It took a fortnight of emails and phone calls before Travelodge responded to the couple’s complaints.
“To be fair the gentleman on the phone was very apologetic, he could not be any more sorry for the incident,” Mr Grieve acknowledged.
The chain offered a room refund alongside a £100 Travelodge voucher, which Mr Grieve said he doubted they would ever use.
The couple were prompted to share their experience publicly after reading about the case of Kyran Smith, who was jailed earlier this year for sexually assaulting a woman in her bed at the Maidenhead Travelodge after staff handed him a key card and her room number in December 2022.
“It could have been so much worse, the potential for what could have happened is huge,” Mr Grieve warned.
“It could have been anybody accessing the room, it could have been a female in the room on her own.”
He added that they felt compelled to speak out in the hope that Travelodge management would address the problem before something worse occurred.
Travelodge said it was “very sorry” for what had happened, and that customer safety and security was a priority.
A statement read: “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 updated room access security policies were not correctly followed in this instance, which is not acceptable.
“We have retrained the team at our Dundee Strathmore Avenue hotel on our updated room security and check-in procedures, and would like to apologise again to Mr Grieve and Ms Hutchison for their experience with us.”
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