Woman's Travelodge naked man ordeal as claims build

A woman has told the BBC how she was "trapped" in her Travelodge hotel room for an hour last summer while a naked man banged on her door and performed "vile" sex acts in the corridor.

Wendy Griffith is among a growing number of guests who believe the chain has failed to take "alarming" experiences seriously "for years" and has been consistently "fobbing people off".

Dozens of people have shared their stories after the BBC revealed how a woman woke up to a man sexually assaulting her in her bed at the chain's Maidenhead branch in 2022 after staff gave him a key card and her room number.

A Travelodge spokesperson said it was "deeply sorry" to hear about Wendy Griffth's experience. Earlier this week, Travelodge's CEO, Jo Boydell, apologised to people that have had "frightening" experiences.

The company, which is based in Thame, Oxfordshire, said it had already "strengthened" its room access policy.

Marketing consultant Wendy Griffith, from Norfolk, was staying at Travelodge London Stratford in July 2025 when she said a man started banging on her door.

She then witnessed him through the door's peephole performing sex acts.

She recalled "rising panic" over the hour as she was "essentially trapped" in the middle of the night trying and failing "multiple times" to contact hotel staff.

With no room phone and no emergency contact number in her room, she used her mobile to try and call the Travelodge website number.

She said she was "incredibly traumatised and not able to summon help", then dialled 999 in desperation.

"The police were incredible," she remembered, "given I was a female staying in a hotel room on my own, three cars pulled up within five minutes to arrest the man.

"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 man, Trevor Reece, 40, pleaded guilty to outraging public decency in September 2025.

He was sentenced by magistrates to four months of alcohol dependency treatment and ordered to pay £185 court costs and £50 compensation to his victim, which she says has yet to be paid.

"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," Wendy Griffth told the BBC.

"When I saw the story break recently, I broke down in tears because it was validation - that other people were experiencing these issues with Travelodge - and just complete and utter devastation that that had happened to that woman.

"That could have potentially happened to me and that's what keeps me awake at night."

She subsequently discovered, during a lull in the hour she was targeted, her tormentor - who was also a hotel guest - had gone to reception and asked for a replacement room key but gave her room number instead of his own.

"That moment when the desk clerk said 'he asked for a key to your room' the blood drained from my body," she recalled.

She said he was only refused as the clerk told her he knew the man was a long staying guest and the number he gave was not his own room.

She insisted Travelodge's responses to her subsequent complaints, which the BBC has seen, have been "categorically not good enough" and she feels "dismissed" and "palmed off".

She said no-one from Travelodge "proactively" offered her a refund, she had to chase them and her case was "pushed out" to the firm's insurers which denied liability.

She also believes CEO Jo Boydell's response to the 2022 Maidenhead attack has been "poor" and was shocked to hear her admit to not being aware of it until the attacker's trial at the end of 2025.

"To take so long to respond," she said, "and now only under media scrutiny and pressure and the fact that their business looks bad," she said.

"If there is ever a situation in your hotel where the police have become involved, that should be an automatic escalation to the CEO for a formal investigation."

A Travelodge spokesperson 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."

A growing number of MPs have also demanded better hotel safety procedures and the privately-owned hotel chain's crisis over guest safety continues to escalate.

The BBC has been contacted by people who have been "terrified" by "strangers" coming into their rooms and many have provided evidence of their subsequent complaints to Travelodge and direct emails to its CEO.

Others have reported accidentally walking into occupied rooms after being given the wrong room key.

The guests said Travelodge's responses had been "lacking", "dismissive", "totally uninterested" and "appalling".

One described three room key mistakes in one night.

Charlotte Bingley, from Birmingham, checked into a Travelodge in the south west of England in February and within an hour an "intimidating" staff member entered her room without knocking.

"I've never been so scared in my life," she said, "I really thought he was going to really hurt me and I was [shouting] 'just get out of the room'."

She said it took "ages for him to leave" and as there was no inside lock on her door, she was "petrified" he would "come back in the middle of the night", so she left.

She described the company's response to her repeated complaints - which the BBC has seen - as "despicable".

A Travelodge spokesperson said: "Our response to Ms Bingley was wholly inappropriate and we are very sorry.

"The team member has since been dismissed and no longer works for the business

"Any case of unauthorised access to a guest's room is a significant cause for concern and what happened to Ms Bingley was very upsetting and shouldn't have happened."

Gordon Hollingsworth, from Essex, said a stranger walked into his and his "horrified" wife's room at midnight at Travelodge Leatherhead in January.

He recalled the unknown man being "as stunned as I was", having been given the key to the couple's room by staff.

He said he rarely writes complaints, but was so shocked by the "lack of organisational care and procedure", he contacted Travelodge because he "could see the very obvious threat".

He "took exception" to how they responded and said: "They just glossed over it. With no mitigations in place to prevent reoccurrence... that will repeat itself."

A Travelodge spokesperson said: "Any case of an unauthorised person entering a guest's room is a significant cause for concern and what happened to Mr Hollingsworth and his family was very upsetting and shouldn't have happened and we have apologised for this."

Sophia Farley, from Bournemouth, was also dissatisfied by Travelodge's reaction to her complaints about "dark figures" appearing in her room at night at the London Belvedere in June 2025.

She emailed CEO Jo Boydell spelling out that she was "shaken and frightened" and stressed her customer service team's initial reply "minimises what was a significant safeguarding failure" and was "wholly insufficient".

She told the BBC when she heard about the Maidenhead attack: "My first thought was, if that happened years ago, why did that then happen to me?

"Nowhere near as bad for me as it was for that poor young woman, but it could have been."

A Travelodge spokesperson said: "Our initial response to Ms Farley was inappropriate.

"In a subsequent response, our Customer Services team apologised profusely to Ms Farley for what happened during her stay, acknowledged her experience and confirmed we had retrained the hotel team. We subsequently processed a full refund of her stay at her request."

In response to growing numbers of people reporting safety issues at the hotel chain, Wendy Griffiths said she felt a "responsibility" to speak up.

"If this many incidences are occurring of reported cases, what is not being reported because women are too afraid to come forward?" she said.

"I want compensation for not just myself, but for [other] victims and I want to make sure that this doesn't happen to other women."

She did receive a "profound and sincere apology" from Travelodge London Stratford's manager and her calls for improvements prompted the hotel to print a staff contact number on its key card holders.

A Travelodge spokesperson said: "We have recently commissioned an independent review which will look at every aspect of our room security procedures and in the meantime we have also strengthened our room access policy and brought in additional training for colleagues.

"Our focus remains on ensuring that everyone feels safe when staying in our hotels."

If you have been affected by issues in this story, BBC Action Line has details of available support.

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