Guests reported unauthorised room entries at nearly one in 10 Travelodge hotels — roughly 60 properties — even as customer-reported cases have fallen significantly since the end of May, according to an independent review led by barrister Paul Greaney KC.

The review, commissioned earlier this year, examined the sexual assault of a guest at a Travelodge in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in December 2022. The assailant, Kyran Smith, lied to a junior desk employee that he was the victim's boyfriend and received a key card to her room less than three minutes later. A court jailed him for seven and a half years in February.

Greaney concluded that the victim, referred to in the report as "Lily", was "fundamentally failed by Travelodge as an organisation at every stage". Her treatment after the assault, he wrote, "fell short of every standard the public would expect of an organisation such as Travelodge. It was simply appalling."

The operational failures ran from the front desk to the executive suite. Lily emailed a complaint to Travelodge in January 2023 asking bosses to review security processes. Customer services handled it, a senior hotel manager investigated it, and the file never reached then-chief executive Jo Boydell until more than three years later. Greaney called that investigation "inadequate" and said it "downplayed to a substantial extent the seriousness of what had happened". The company subsequently offered Lily reimbursement of her night's stay — an amount she "understandably interpreted as an offer of £30".

The sharpest finding for the wider sector: Greaney said unauthorised room entries have become so well known across UK hotels that the industry itself has named them "room intrusions". While his review focused on Travelodge, "the evidence I have received reveals that room intrusions are not a type of occurrence restricted to Travelodge hotels, but instead are a problem across the hotel sector".

His report stated plainly: "Change needed to occur, and still needs to occur, across the sector, not just within Travelodge." Greaney said he could not name all the companies he spoke to because many conversations took place in confidence; he also gathered evidence from trade bodies, charities, MPs and a police organisation.

Leadership has already turned over. Boydell stepped down as chief executive in August after criticism of her handling of the incident and of safety concerns across the chain — criticism that prompted former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to urge her earlier this year to "seriously engage" with the Government on hotel security. The review noted she led an immediate drive for change once she became aware of the 2022 assault. Ray Reidy now leads the company on an interim basis.

"I apologise unreservedly on behalf of Travelodge to all guests where we have failed, and particularly to Lily," Reidy said. He acknowledged the review "makes it clear that there were failures in Travelodge's room access security policies and procedures and in the way customers have been treated", and said the chain has made "significant progress in preventing and addressing these issues over the past six months" while recognising "we still have further to go". Travelodge is dedicating "significant resources" to the overhaul and changing its governance structure to embed the improvements.

For operators beyond Travelodge, the compliance benchmark now sits with UKHospitality. The trade body recently published new guest security guidance covering how front desks should respond to requests for replacement room keys, access by people not named on bookings, and the management of group and corporate bookings.

"The guest safety principles and guidance we have developed provides a framework for accommodation businesses to continue to strengthen their standards in ways that work for their specific venue," said UKHospitality chief executive Allen Simpson. "We urge every single accommodation provider to use these principles to review their current arrangements." He added that the guidance would be kept under review and regularly updated.

Greaney said he hopes other hotel bosses will apply the review's findings to their own policies and procedures — pressure that, combined with the UKHospitality framework, is likely to make key-card issuance protocols and complaint escalation routes a boardroom-level issue across the sector in the months ahead.