A man who was a guest at a Birmingham hotel found himself stuck in the lift as he feared for his life after it broke down between floors.<\/p>\n
Vijay Bali, 28, was meeting a friend at a room inside Fort Dunlop’s Travelodge Erdington when the lift broke down.<\/p>\n
Mr Bali filmed himself feeling ‘hot and anxious’ inside the lift after waiting for over half an hour.<\/p>\n
He was freed within the hour by a maintenance worker.<\/p>\n
Travelodge said he was stuck in the lift for 40 minutes,but was swiftly freed after it lodged a ‘priority call’ with its maintenance team.<\/p>\n
Mr Bali, who works as a sales advisor, said: “I went to the desk, checked in, jumped in the lift and pressed number five. I felt the lift going up, then all of a sudden there’s lights flashing and noises going.<\/p>\n
“I tried to press the buzzer and tried to open the door but I could just see brick. Next thing I know the maintenance man says: ‘You’re stuck in the lift.’<\/p>\n
“I was in between floors seven and eight. My phone battery was on ten per cent and the worst thing was I was starving as well. I just kept thinking what if the wire snaps and it comes crashing down or up, I just sat there on the floor thinking: ‘I’m going to die’.<\/p>\n
“It was stuck making all those noises. I could feel the lift trying to pull itself up and down. On top of that I could hear people in the other working lift laughing and talking. It was like being trapped in a prison c<\/p>\n
“The maintenance guy came, he said usually it takes three – four hours, so I was glad to see him. He got it open and there was a little gap by floor eight so I pulled myself out to the 8th floor.<\/p>\n
“I was laughing and joking afterwards because there was a lot of customers around but I’m scared to jump in a lift ever again and I’m worried about passing that fear onto my kids.”<\/p>\n
Travelodge apologised to Mr Bali and said it had refunded his stay in full and given him a voucher for another stay at the hotel.<\/p>\n
It added that he was rescued after 40 minutes and the company was in contact with him throughout that time.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for Travelodge said: \u201cWe would like to sincerely apologise to Mr Bali for the isolated incident that took place at our hotel on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
“The hotel team were in contact and supporting Mr Bali throughout the 40 minutes whilst the maintenance team opened the lift with a bespoke key.<\/p>\n
“As a gesture of good for this inconvenience we offered Mr Bali and his partner complimentary refreshments in the hotel\u2019s Bar Caf\u00e9, refunded his stay in full and also gave him a complimentary voucher for a future stay.”<\/p>\n
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A man who was a guest at a Birmingham hotel found himself stuck in the lift as he feared for his life after it broke down between floors. Vijay Bali, 28, was meeting a friend at a room inside Fort Dunlop’s Travelodge Erdington when the lift broke down. Mr Bali filmed himself feeling ‘hot and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,3,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}