A woman has told of her horror after she was ‘trapped’ in her Travelodge hotel room for an hour while a naked man knocked on the door and performed sex acts outside.
Wendy Griffith was staying at the chain’s London Stratford branch in July 2025 when she witnessed the ‘vile’ spectacle through the door’s peephole.
The marketing consultant, from Norfolk, recalled her ‘rising panic’ over the hour in the middle of the night as she tried and failed ‘multiple times’ to contact hotel staff.
Ms Griffith’s story is one of dozens to have emerged in recent months – amid claims Travelodge has failed to take the ‘alarming’ experiences seriously ‘for years’.
It follows a security breach in December 2022 that led to a guest being sexually assaulted by a man who was given unauthorised access to her room.
Sharing her story, Ms Griffith told the BBC that the incident involving her, last summer, had caused a lasting ‘psychological impact’.
She described feeling ‘incredibly traumatised and not able to summon help’ before dialling 999 in desperation.
Ms Griffith praised the police response adding that ‘three cars pulled up within five minutes’ to arrest the man.
Wendy Griffith (pictured) was staying at the chain’s London Stratford branch in July 2025 when she witnessed the ‘vile’ spectacle through the door’s peephole
Travelodge changed its key policy after a woman was sexually assaulted by a man who had been given access to her room at a Travelodge in Maidenhead in 2022 (file image)
She added: ‘It was a very dramatic scene, he attempted to run back in his room, barricade the door, the police had to force their way in, use pepper spray.’
The culprit, Trevor Reece, 40, pleaded guilty to outraging public decency in September 2025.
He was sentenced to four months of alcohol dependency treatment and ordered to pay £185 court costs and £50 compensation to his victim – which Ms Griffith says she is yet to receive.
She said: ‘The impact that has resulted in terms of the psychological impact, the flashbacks, the impact to my business, my livelihood, all of it, and my situation was not as extreme as the lady in the Travelodge Maidenhead hotel.’
Ms Griffith said she ‘broke down in tears’ on seeing the Maidenhead security breach story break as it was ‘validation’ that others were experiencing the same issues – as well as ‘complete and utter devastation’ it had happened to someone else.
She also revealed the horrifying discovery that during a lull in the hour she was targeted, her tormentor had asked reception for a replacement room key – but gave her room number.
‘That moment when the desk clerk said “he asked for a key to your room” the blood drained from my body,’ Ms Griffith.
She said the clerk had told her the man was only refused the key due to being a longstanding guest – meaning it was known that the number he gave was not his own room.
Ms Griffith said Trvelodge’s responses to her complaints had been ‘categorically not good enough’ – adding she felt ‘dismissed’.
She said nobody offered her a refund and her case was ‘pushed out’ to the firm’s insurers – which denied liability.
Ms Griffith added that CEO Jo Boydell’s response to the 2022 Maidenhead attack had been long overdue, and suggested a situation involving police should trigger ‘automatic escalation to the CEO for a formal investigation’.
Jo Boydell (pictured), CEO of Travelodge, issued a formal apology after the 2022 incident emerged
Travelodge said: ‘We were deeply sorry to hear about the distressing experience Ms Griffith had at our London Stratford hotel and our handling of her case.
‘We have since rolled out training to all of our hotels to ensure that the hotel phone number is on every key card wallet given to a customer so they can reach our team at any time, day or night.’
Last month the company announced an overhaul of its room key policy after the Maidenhead incident came to light.
In February, Kyran Smith received a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence over the attack.
Ms Boydell has since apologised to the victim in a statement, confirming that new or replacement keys will now only be provided with the guest’s explicit consent.
She said: ‘I would like to express again how deeply sorry I am for what happened to the victim and for the mistakes we made in handling this.
‘We got things wrong and we should have acted sooner, and I am truly sorry for that. I would welcome the opportunity to meet the victim to discuss what happened and to learn from our mistakes.
‘We have done an internal review of our room access security policies and have made some immediate changes to ensure that an additional or replacement room key is only issued with explicit permission from the person, or people, staying in the room.’
Before the chief executive spoke out, the anonymous victim said Travelodge failed to handle the situation appropriately, noting that the company ‘took a very long time’ to respond and appeared to dismiss her concerns.
She said: ‘It was escalated in their company a little bit… but they still didn’t take the right precautions to deal with the situation.’
Kyran Smith (pictured) was jailed for seven and a half years in February over the 2022 attack in Maidenhead
Travelodge first offered a £30 refund – which the victim called ‘insulting’ – before finally apologising.
She has since urged the company to learn from their mistakes to make sure similar incidents do not happen again.
In December 2022, Smith – who had attended the same party as the victim – tricked hotel staff into giving him a key card by claiming to be her boyfriend.
The woman alleged that her attacker had bypassed security checks at reception simply because he knew her name.
She told BBC News that personal details shouldn’t be enough to grant access to a person’s room, insisting that hotels must seek direct consent from the guest before handing out keys.
She noted her room also lacked a safety chain for added security.
