Most of us have probably had a hotel card key that didn’t work. You typically go down to the front desk, switch the card out, try again and it works. The card may have been a dud. Or maybe the front desk worker was this horrible guy.
But on occasion the problem goes beyond something simple and turns out to be due to an electrical or system error. Which is exactly what happened to a content creator named Melissa last year.
Melissa had been traveling all day, it was after midnight, she was exhausted, and all she wanted to do was get into her room and go to sleep.
Instead, she found herself trapped in what felt like the world’s least exciting escape room.
The first key card didn’t work.
OK, no big deal. It happens.
The second key card didn’t work.
That’s annoying, but still probably fixable.
The third key card didn’t work.
Now we’re entering “What exactly is going on here?” territory.
According to Melissa, every time she tried a key card, the lock flashed orange instead of green. Meanwhile, the front desk employee was just as confused as she was. To his credit, he was apparently doing everything he could think of and remained helpful and professional throughout the ordeal.
Unfortunately, nothing was actually solving the problem.
Here’s her first video:
@mcstops Who remembers this one? 😫 #travelnightmare #travelproblems #hotelhell #businesstrip #solotraveler
Still No Room At The Holiday Inn
At some point, the situation crossed over from “minor inconvenience” into “this is ridiculous.”
After multiple key cards and multiple room assignments failed, the hotel wound up calling a manager in from home at 1:30 in the morning.
Think about that for a second.
A manager had to get out of bed, get dressed, drive to the hotel, and come to work in the middle of the night because nobody could figure out how to get a paying guest into a room.
And even then, Melissa still didn’t have a room.
At one point she started wondering if she’d somehow forgotten how to use a hotel key card.
“Do I not know how to use a room key? Did I forget?” she joked.
Honestly, after four key cards, three room assignments and more than an hour of troubleshooting, I’d probably be wondering the same thing.
Wait…There Was No Backup Plan?
This is the part of the story that really caught my attention.
Melissa said she would have been perfectly happy if someone had simply walked her to a room and manually opened the door. She was going to stay in there all night, so that would have been a fine way to solve the problem, as far as she was concerned.
But according to her, the hotel employees told her they couldn’t.
Not because of company policy.
Not because they weren’t allowed.
But because they apparently had no way to do it. They had no master key. No override. No emergency backup. At least, none that anyone on-site knew how to use.
And that’s the point where my eyebrow shot straight up into my hairline.
Because if a dead battery, faulty lock, or software glitch can completely prevent hotel staff from accessing a room, what happens if there’s an actual emergency?
She Finally Got Into A Room!
Eventually, Melissa did get into a room. She was given a late checkout and said the employees who helped her were consistently kind, apologetic, and accommodating throughout the entire mess.
They even kept offering her food and drinks while they tried to figure out what was wrong.
But nice employees can only do so much.
Will Holiday Inn Make It Right?
Melissa later said the hotel promised a refund in the form of points deposited into her account. Since she was traveling for work, that arrangement was fine with her.
There was just one problem.
Several days later, the points still hadn’t shown up.
Here’s her second video:
@mcstops Replying to @klshanley Here’s what happened! #hotellife #hotelhell #travelproblems #businesstrip #solotraveler
What Was Actually Wrong?
The internet immediately began doing what the internet does best: diagnosing a problem it wasn’t there to see.
One commenter who said they previously worked in hotels suggested the orange light likely meant the lock’s battery was low or dead.
A security company chimed in and said there were several possible causes for this sort of issue, including dead batteries, disconnected power cables, or authorization failures within the lock itself.
Whatever the cause, commenters overwhelmingly agreed on one thing: A hotel should probably have a Plan B.
Viewers Were Sympathetic
And honestly?
Most of the comments weren’t criticizing Melissa.
They weren’t even criticizing the front desk employee.
They were criticizing the fact that a modern hotel appeared to have no practical backup plan when its room-access technology failed.
Because while a two-hour delay getting into your room is frustrating, the bigger question remains:
If nobody can get into the room when the system stops working…what happens when someone really needs to?
IHG Fail
As we mentioned earlier, several days after the initial event, Melissa still hadn’t received any points in her account. So she decided to reach out to IHG.
They apologized and said they would use the incident as a teaching opportunity.
Melissa’s next video was its own teachable situation – using IHG as an example of how to lose customers and alienate people.
@mcstops Check your DMs for a message from me 😊 #travelnightmare #travelproblems #hotelhell #hotellife #businesstravel #travelstory #solotraveler #holidayinn #holidayinnexpress #ihg @Starbucks
Hilton to the Rescue!
So as far as we know, IHG never did make good on compensating her points. But since her TikTok videos at the time went viral, another entity got wind of it. The narration of her final video says it all:
@hilton saved the day and turned my travel nightmare into a dream come true! They’ve offered me a two-night stay at any of their properties and I’m so incredibly grateful! Hilton girlie for life ❤️
Hilton’s comment?: “Saving the stay is what we’re all about! see you soon! 😘”
@mcstops @hilton saved the day and turned my travel nightmare into a dream come true! They’ve offered me a two-night stay at any of their properties and I’m so incredibly grateful! Hilton girlie for life ❤️ #hilton #hiltonhotel #travelopportunities #vacationmodeon #vacationvibes
In the end, this story was never really about a faulty hotel door lock.
I mean, sure…technology fails. Batteries die. Software glitches happen. Most travelers understand that.
What people tend to remember is how a company responds when things go wrong.
To be fair, Melissa repeatedly praised the front desk employee and manager who tried to help her. By her own account, they were professional, apologetic, and did everything they could with the tools they had.
The bigger problem came afterward.
A promised compensation apparently never arrived. Follow-up communication didn’t address the issue she was asking about. And what should have been a relatively straightforward customer-service recovery turned into a public example of how not to handle a frustrated guest.
Ironically, the company that seems to have benefited the most from the whole situation wasn’t IHG at all.
It was Hilton.
Sometimes customer loyalty is earned one great stay at a time.
And sometimes it’s earned because your competitor dropped the ball.
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