An independent legal review has concluded that Travelodge "fundamentally failed" a guest sexually assaulted at its Maidenhead hotel in Berkshire in December 2022, with the budget chain's treatment of the victim described as "appalling" and "disgraceful" by the barrister who led the inquiry.

Paul Greaney KC's report found the assailant — Kyran Smith, who falsely claimed to be the guest's boyfriend — wrongly received a key card granting access to her room. Smith was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in February for the assault. The report also flagged reports of "room intrusion" at nearly one-in-10 Travelodge hotels, equivalent to roughly 60 properties.

What did the review find?

Greaney concluded that the victim, referred to as "Lily", was failed by Travelodge "at every stage" — from the security lapse that enabled the attack to the chain's handling of her subsequent complaint.

Her January 2023 email of complaint was processed by the customer services team and investigated by a single senior hotel manager. Greaney called that investigation "inadequate and downplayed to a substantial extent the seriousness of what had happened." The complaint did not reach then-chief executive Jo Boydell until more than three years later.

How was the victim compensated?

Following her written complaint, the guest received what Greaney called an "insulting offer" of reimbursement for her night's stay — a sum she understood to be £30. The chain's post-complaint treatment, the report said, "fell short of every standard the public would expect of an organisation such as Travelodge."

What has changed at the top?

Boydell, who had led Travelodge since May 2022, resigned in August after facing public criticism from the victim, who cited "very slow progress" and a lack of accountability, and from then-prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who urged her to "seriously engage" with MPs on the safety issue after she cancelled a parliamentary meeting.

Interim chief executive Ray Reidy said: "I apologise unreservedly on behalf of Travelodge to all guests where we have failed, and particularly to Lily." 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."

Reidy said "significant progress" had been made "in preventing and addressing these issues over the past six months" and pledged further resources to the overhaul, though the company has not disclosed a budget figure.

What is the wider industry response?

UK Hospitality, the industry body, has issued new guest security guidance covering:

• Requests for replacement room keys
• Access by guests not named on the booking
• Group and corporate reservations

Greaney said the underlying security issues are "widespread and not restricted" to Travelodge, placing the entire UK hotel sector in scope.

For operators, the case crystallises the cost of weak key-control protocols. A single intrusion has triggered regulatory scrutiny, a CEO departure and an industry-wide policy reset — a far heavier bill than the routine capex on key-card systems, staff training and incident-response procedures that might have prevented it.

The next test for Travelodge will be whether Reidy can translate the promised security overhaul into measurable guest-safety gains before the budget sector's price-sensitive customers vote with their bookings.