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Image caption, Kyran Smith assaulted the woman at the Travelodge hotel in Maidenhead in 2022 By Ethan Gudge and Joe Campbell South of England A woman who was sexually assaulted by a man who was given a key to her hotel room has called for a national framework for hotel security. The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked by Kyran Smith after he was given a key to her room at a Travelodge in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in December 2022. Her ordeal, along with reports from dozens of other guests , led to Travelodge commissioning an independent review into security, which was released this week and was highly critical of the hotel chain.
Responding to the findings, interim chief executive of Travelodge Ray Reidy told the BBC " nobody is working harder on security of rooms in this industry than we are today". He said the chain, headquartered in Thame, Oxfordshire, had made a "number of changes" since the "heinous" attack in Maidenhead became national news earlier this year. Speaking to the BBC on Friday, the woman at the centre of the scandal said: "When you look at the report itself, what's actually changing?
Is it actually getting better?" Image source, Thames Valley Police Image caption, Smith was jailed for more than seven years In his independent review, barrister Paul Greaney KC found that Travelodge's security policies at the time of the attack at its Maidenhead hotel in 2022 were "not fit for the purpose of keeping guests safe" . Kyran Smith, who obtained the key by falsely claiming to be the woman's boyfriend, was jailed in January for seven years and six months . The review found he was handed the key less than three minutes after approaching the reception desk, by a receptionist who had received no training in key security.
"I feel frustrated because it shouldn't have taken this long and I do believe that the only reason we're here is because I decided to report this in the first place to the BBC," the woman said. "My biggest worry is that the report has shown that there are still problems at the time when you'd expect that the hotels themselves were being more vigilant. "If it's not perfect now - and they can work on that - I think they will just start to slip and it will just revert back." Greaney's report found Travelodge guests were still not as safe as they should be, with room intrusions reported at nearly one in 10 of the chain's hotels this summer.
He also found there was no policy in place on violence against women and girls. The woman said she believed there should be "some government involvement" in solving the issues raised in the report, setting up and regulating "mandatory guidelines that all hotels have to follow". Among these, she suggested, should be ID checks before handing individuals keys to rooms, which failed to happen in her case.
She said: "Hotels aren't going to take it very seriously unless there is an actual consequence... and they should be held accountable for actually following them." As the law stands at present, primarily, the hotel and its management are responsible for the safety of guests. Each hotel or chain will have its own security policy which staff should abide by. Figure caption, In an interview with the BBC in March, then Travelodge chief executive Jo Boydell said she only became aware of the assault during the court case almost three years later Asked if she would stay in a Travelodge hotel following the report, the woman said: "No." She added: "I think that's because I'm quite determined to actually make some changes in terms of hotel security.
"If I could stop someone else from getting in the situation I was in and not knowing what to do and having those feelings then it's definitely worth it." "Sometimes something bad hopefully can then lead to something good, and I'm quite driven to want to make things better." Following this week's report, Travelodge said it apologised "unreservedly" to the woman. Reidy said the review made clear there were failures in its policies and in the way customers had been treated. "We have made significant progress in preventing and addressing these issues over the past six months, and we recognise we still have further to go," he said.
The firm added that a new board committee would oversee the changes, with independent assessments of its progress after six and 12 months. Get in touch Your Voice
Source: BBC
