Women's safety standards urged across hotels

A charity working with a hotel chain to tackle violence against women and girls following an independent review is calling for industry-wide standards.

Travelodge is consulting with personal safety charity Suzy Lamplugh Trust (SLT) after a review of the chain found guests were still not as safe as they should be.

The review came 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 December 2022 after staff gave him a key card and her room number.

Saskia Garner, head of policy and campaigns at SLT, said the incidents highlighted in the review "need to be a wake-up call to all organisations across the hospitality sector".

Barrister Paul Greaney KC, who carried out the independent review, said the chain's security policies at the time of the attack at its Maidenhead hotel were "not fit for the purpose of keeping guests safe".

He found room intrusions reported at nearly one-in-10 Travelodge hotels this summer, and no policy in place on violence against women and girls.

Interim chief executive of Travelodge, Ray Reidy, said the company, which is based in Thame, Oxfordshire, is working with the SLT to develop one.

Saskia Garner said the work with Travelodge is "just developing" and that the charity is working with the company "to ensure that their policies and procedures reflect and address the issues of violence against women and girls", which the charity believes "need to be urgently addressed".

She said the charity hopes this will be rolled out to all staff "imminently".

Garner said the incidents that have been highlighted in the review "should never have happened".

"It absolutely needs to be a wake-up call to all organisations across the hospitality sector to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again and that their policies and procedures and training are fit for purpose and that their staff understand how these behaviours play out and ensure that every preventative measure is put in place to ensure no one ever experiences anything like this again."

In the review, Greaney said room intrusions were a problem across the hotel sector.

Garner said: "Given the prevalence of violence against women and girls in society, I think it's almost certain that these issues [highlighted in the review] will not be confined to one particular hotel chain.

"That is why we are calling for industry-wide standards and training to ensure the highest level of implementation, knowledge and understanding about violence against women and girls and how that manifests in the hotel context."

The review of Travelodge makes 38 recommendations, including moving towards a system that requires guests to show ID to get a room key, which Travelodge has been trialling at some hotels since May.

Reidy said: "Nobody is working harder on security of rooms in this industry than we are today.

"We embrace all of the findings in the review, we accept the recommendations and we will address all of those."