Travelodge: A New ‘Blind Date’ Scheme ?

 

Followers of the now somewhat beleaguered hotel chain may have noted an item in the news recently regarding room keys issued in error to unauthorised persons.

Rumours abound as to why this might have happened, but an interesting alternative explanation surfaced recently on social media, based on the possibility that it wasn’t actually a mistake after all….

The theory advanced is that in attempt to ‘spice up’ their hotel offering, Travelodge’s Marketing Development Department have come up with a ‘blind date’ type scheme whereby rooms are selected at random and a surprise additional occupant, also selected at random, is issued with a second pass key.

This is apparently designed to ‘make life more interesting’ for the unwitting participants and encourage lonely single travellers to ‘interact more’, thus making their stay more memorable and hence likely to promote re-bookings. 

Reactions to the pilot scheme were confidently expected to be generally positive once the ‘ice was broken’ for most pairings. In the unlikely event of complaints  from either of the participants, these would be smoothed over by sympathetic reception staff with a profuse apology for the ‘mistake’ and the offer of a free extra night’s stay for any ‘particularly difficult’ customers.

Needless to say, if the scheme was pre-planned, management are likely to be a little disappointed with the reactions so far, and particularly aggrieved at their 'bad luck' in selecting a victim of domestic abuse for the pilot…and then managing to team them up with….their abuser.

How much credibility should we give to this particular rumour ? I couldn't possibly comment....

Questioned about the incident with the ‘rogue’ robotic vacuum cleaner that went AWOL in 2022, a hotel spokesman reported that “…we’ve not had any more issues with our cleaners escaping since we locked them all up at nights, although one or two have mysteriously disappeared from our storage cupboards. We think the cleaning staff may have removed them, although they all deny this. CCTV footage seems to show occasional unexplained gaps during nightime hours which we can't account for…”.

The 2022 'escape' incident sparked considerable interest at the time in the possibility of an AI ‘super intelligence’ hiding in plain sight within some robotic vacuum cleaners, and still defies explanation to this day. A GCHQ spokesman offered a 'no comment' verdict recently on the possibility than Beijing might have built in an AI 'back door' to the microelectronics controlling these devices, capable of information-gathering for CCP. The plot thickens....

First published 10.8.26

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