Strangers had sex in our Premier Inn hotel room while we were out

Strangers had sexual relations in our Premier Inn room while we were out and Premier Inn refuses to do anything about it.

We are an elderly couple in our 70s and my husband has advanced Parkinson’s and ­dementia. We had booked an accessible room for two nights in the London Stratford hotel over Christmas while we visited our daughter. The room was in good order when we checked in but when we returned from our daughter’s at 9pm we were horrified to discover that people had participated in sexual relations in the bathroom. Knickers were strewn, condoms were in the toilet and a party hat was in the bedroom.

I called reception but there was no answer. I was unable to leave my husband to seek help, so had to clean the toilet with a towel. The following morning, I could only find a member of staff on the bar who cleared away the offending items but said there were no housekeeping staff on site to clean up. We therefore felt unable to use the shower during our stay as we didn’t know where body fluids were.

Premier Inn insists there is no record of our room being accessed while we were out and has been ­dismissive. As you can imagine, my husband and I are not going to be having sexual relations in this ­manner at our age.

BT, Derbyshire

Your experience was so outlandish that I pressed you on each detail. The photos you took show a paper hat from a cracker on the bedroom floor, a pair of black panties balled in the washbasin and

several condoms floating in the lavatory.

Premier Inn’s initial response to you was certainly dismissive. It apologised for “any inconvenience” for this disruption to your “­positive journey”, insisted that only your key card had been used to access the room that afternoon and informed you that it would make every effort to prevent “any similar incidence” [sic] and would not correspond further.

Now, perhaps the company has experience of pensioners bringing carpet bags full of sex aids to strew about the room in order to claim a refund. Maybe it assumed that ­festive cheer had gone to your heads that evening. Or maybe its room lock readers aren’t as reliable as it assumes. It backtracked at speed when I asked whether there was CCTV in the corridor to pinpoint the culprit and why the hotel had been so understaffed.

It remains adamant that you were the only people to enter the room after it was cleaned in the morning, and there is apparently no CCTV in the corridors. However, it conceded the door might not have shut properly when you left for your daughter’s and that a passing couple might have seized the opportunity for high jinks. It also conceded that there should have been staff available to clean the room.

A spokesperson said: “We acknowledge and apologise for the subsequent experience of how the complaint was dealt with, and as such as a gesture of goodwill we will be contacting the guest directly to arrange a refund for their stay.”

Email your.problems@observer.co.uk. Include an address and phone number. Submission and publication are subject to our terms and conditions