Couple wake up to find shirtless stranger in Dundee Travelodge bedroom

A couple woke to find a shirtless man in their hotel bedroom after he was mistakenly given a key card to their door, BBC Scotland News has learned.

Kim Hutchison, 60, and Harry Grieve, 57, from Buckie, Moray, were staying in a Travelodge in Dundee when the early morning incident happened last month.

Hutchison said she was "petrified" before the man - wearing just shorts - left after about a minute of arguing over who was actually in the wrong room.

Travelodge apologised to the couple and said room access security policies were not correctly followed. It is the latest in a series of similar incidents at Travelodge hotels reported to the BBC.

Earlier this year, a man was jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in her hotel bed after Travelodge staff gave him a key card and her room number.

Kyran Smith had gone to the reception of the Maidenhead branch of the hotel chain in the early hours in December 2022 and said he was the woman's boyfriend.

Travelodge later said it was investigating more reports of strangers accessing rooms - after two women told the BBC that people they did not know came into their rooms while they were alone.

Hutchison and Grieve contacted BBC Your Voice to share their story.

The couple had been visiting relatives in Dundee and had gone to bed at the Strathmore Avenue branch of Travelodge.

The incident happened after 02:00 on Saturday 11 July.

"I just woke up, I had heard the door click, and sat up in bed," Hutchison said.

"Here was a guy at the bottom of the bed, just standing with shorts on. He had something in his hand which I took to be the key card for the room."

The florist said she tried to appear calm but was "absolutely petrified" at the situation.

"I asked why he was in this room and he said 'this is my room' and I said 'this is ours'," she said.

"He kept saying '316' and I said 'no this is 313'. He was adamant it was his room. After a few polite words - I think I swore actually - he eventually went. He must have been in the room for maybe just under a minute.

"It was scary, him being there."

The couple thought the man was in his mid-20s.

Grieve said he got dressed and went down to reception to try to find out what had happened and "get some answers" about why a stranger had been able to get into their room.

He said he did not find anyone at the reception desk.

Police later arrived due to a call about another disturbance at the hotel around the same time. It is understood no arrests were made.

The couple tried to get some sleep, with a chair against the room door, before getting up in the morning.

"We cut our weekend short and headed back to Buckie," said Grieve, who works at the St Fergus gas plant, near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.

"It was a good two weeks before they got back to us, after various emails and attempted telephone calls.

"To be fair the gentleman on the phone was very apologetic, he could not be any more sorry for the incident."

Travelodge said it was "very sorry" for what had happened, and that customer safety and security was a priority.

"Any case of an unauthorised person entering a guest's room is a significant cause for concern and we want to be clear that this should not have happened," a statement said.

"Our updated room access security policies were not correctly followed in this instance, which is not acceptable.

"We have retrained the team at our Dundee Strathmore Avenue hotel on our updated room security and check-in procedures, and would like to apologise again to Mr Grieve and Ms Hutchison for their experience with us."

The previously-announced Travelodge safety review remains ongoing.