This woman was locked out of every hotel room she was offered. Here’s what happened.
Imagine you’re tired after a long day of traveling and just want to fall into your hotel room bed. All to get a decent night’s rest.
Instead, you have to stay awake for much longer than you anticipated. All because you can’t get into literally any hotel room you’re offered.
And no, it’s not because you’re being picky (you’ll take any room at this point), it’s seemingly due to an electrical or system error with electronic keycards.
Tired passenger locked out of every Holiday Inn hotel room
In a viral video with 1 million views, content creator Melissa (@mcstops) shared the unfortunate situation she was put in at an IHG Holiday Inn hotel.
In the video, Melissa explained that she’d been traveling all day and got to the hotel after midnight. But when she went up to her room, the keycard didn’t work.
At first, it seemed like an easily resolvable issue (just get another card). However, by 1:05am, she was on her third keycard attempt.
When Melissa held her card up to the scanner, a light flashed orange instead of green.
When she went downstairs to let the front desk person know the key still wasn’t working, Melissa maintained a nice demeanor, despite being exhausted. The employee was very nice and proactive about it, too, but also frustrated that nothing he did seemed to work.
After her fourth key and third room assignment still didn’t work, the front desk employee ended up having to get a manager to come from home to help solve the issue at 1:30am.
“Do I not know how to use a room key? Did I forget?” she said.
Still no room at the Holiday Inn
While Melissa said she would have been fine if they’d just manually let her into a room, even if she didn’t have the key, they told her they couldn’t do it.
Not because of policy or anything like that, but because they seemingly don’t have a way to get into the room manually. For instance, there was no universal key or way to override the system.
More than two whole hours later, Melissa still isn’t in her hotel room.
“I kinda feel like they should offer me a sister hotel or something,” Melissa said. “But I’m trying to be nice to the peopel who are helping me because it’s not their fault.”
Melissa added that everyone who helped her was really nice and apologetic and kept offering her food and beverages.
Melissa did eventually make it into her room and was, of course, granted late checkout, but she remained perplexed that she was in the situation at all.
“There should be some kind of fail-safe if your room key technology doesn’t work. You should have some sort of master key,” Melissa said. “What happens if someone’s having an emergency?”
Will Holiday Inn give her a refund?
After getting no response to her video, Melissa reached out to the brand via Instagram, where she saw they were more active. The customer support rep said they created a case number and are taking her feedback about the locks into consideration.
The hotel told Melissa that they’d refund her by depositing the points into her account (since she’s traveling for work). However, she still hasn’t received anything three days later, and the deposit was supposed to be made the same day she had the issue.
“How not to respond when someone has a bad experience with your business,” Melissa said.
What was wrong with the door?
Security company iDLK noted that in this situation, there could be a few reasons why no card could open the door:
- The door lock battery is dead or improperly installed
- The lock body power cable is off
- The door lock is not authorized
In Melissa’s situation, it’s possible that the device’s batteries needed to be refreshed or that there was an issue with the cables communicating between the mainboard and battery pack.
“I used to work in hotels. orange flash usually means the battery is low or dead. It shows poor maintenance, plus the duty manager should have been trained on how to change it too,” a commenter speculated.
Viewers are sympathetic
“Management should’ve escorted you up to your room with a master key card just like what the cleaning crew uses,” a top comment read.
“They should have comped your night and provide you with an immediate accommodation elsewhere. I work for hotels btw,” a person said.
“1. There is a backup for when the electronic keys dont work 2. After the 2nd time they should have sent maintenance with you. Its definitely not an issue that should require them calling the manager,” another wrote.
“As tired and frustrated as I know you were the way you kept calm didn’t loose it on the employees is amazing! You are a great person,” a commenter noted.
@mcstops I appreciate the staff at the hotel doing everything they could to resolve the situation. They were kind and apologetic. But I think there needs to be some sort of backup plan if the electronic key system doesn’t work. IHG, I hope you use this video to provide training on real-life scenarios. @IHG Hotels & Resorts @Holiday Inn Express by IHG #travelnightmare #travelproblems #hotelhell #hotellife #businesstravel #travelstory #solotraveler #holidayinn #holidayinnexpress #ihg ♬ original sound – Melissa
The Daily Dot reached out to Melissa for comment via email and Instagram direct message and to IHG via email.
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