Hilary Barry had a bizarre encounter with a man in her hotel room. Photo / @hilarybarry
Hilary Barry had a bizarre encounter with a man in her hotel room. Photo / @hilarybarry
The Seven Sharp host thought she was alone when she went to the loo in her hotel room. She wasn’t.
Hilary Barry has revealed an awkward encounter with a stranger in her hotel room when she thought she was alone and using the toilet.
The Seven Sharp co-host said she felt compelled to share “the weirdest experience” she had at her hotel while working in the South Island.
The 55-year-old explained in a Facebook post that she had been away on a work assignment and only had an hour to check in to her hotel.
Using the bathroom was the first thing she did once inside the room, and she hadn’t bothered closing the door as she thought she was alone. “Why would I?” Barry wrote.
“Just moments into my ablutions, I heard a strange noise and realised there was a total stranger (not a hotel employee) standing in my hotel room,” she wrote.
“He didn’t say a word and I was suddenly very alarmed. What the actual??? A complete stranger was standing in my room while I was .. well .. having a moment on the loo.”
According to Barry, the man didn’t immediately walk away - to her shock.
“He remarkably hung around long enough for me to extract myself from the porcelain seat, flush the appliance and wash my hands. I came out and he was in the room ready for a chat; a meeting if you will. Ffs.”
Barry explained the man told her that the hotel staff had told him the room they were both in was his. He then went downstairs to speak to the staff, who called Barry and apologised for the mix-up.
While the journalist and TV presenter admitted the encounter was “bloody embarrassing” and acknowledged mistakes happen, she also thought it should never have happened.
She wrote: “To the perfectly pleasant dude who came into my room thinking it was his room. From the moment you saw someone else’s bag in the room, you should have left.
“No correct that, you should have fled back to the reception desk and told them someone was already occupying that room. The person who was first in that room (which in this case was me but could have been anyone else) didn’t want to meet you or have a chat.
“Particularly after you $&!ing walked in while they were doing number twos! That was weird. Don’t ever do that again. If you get the wrong room and someone’s already in it then get the hell out of there as fast as you can. Don’t look back.”
Seven Sharp host Hilary Barry.
The post has attracted a lot of attention on social media, garnering nearly 6000 reactions and hundreds of comments.
Many commenters shared their own experiences of double-assigned hotel rooms, while others sympathised with Barry being in a potentially vulnerable situation.
“My daughter has been in a hotel room twice and alone and men have walked into her room. Also after a long flight I was with her and it happened ... She now tries to put chairs and anything she can find to block the door,” one comment read.
“I had that happen (not the loo part) but just turned out the light and no extra lock on door - I hear the door open and I’m in bed. They had given room to another week,” read another.
Barry is no stranger to viral fame on social media.
In October, Barry shared on Facebook a letter she had written in 1978 to her classmate Roger, who had given her a ring as part of his marriage proposal when she was 8 years old. The post attracted thousands of reactions from social media users.
