As someone who has previously worked in the Hospitality Sector, I can tell you the fire excuse is complete crap because they have no way of actually knowing which of the booked guests are actually in the building or not and therefore work it out a completely different way.
And as anybody whos ever been evacuated after a fire alarm will tell you the way it works is the designated person arrives at the muster point with a list of rooms that are let and the occupants have checked in to and they go along all the guests outside and ask just two questions one is what room number are you booked into ? and two is everyone who was with you in that room accounted for [ in other words are they all outside with you ? or do you know for a fact they are somewhere other than the hotel ? ]
Usually, that results in 90/10 split and they concentrate on the 10% usually by getting the Fire Brigade to check those room numbers along with the rooms they have as let but don't have anybody on the car park from.
So basically the way the system works is how many or how few people are actually in the room and who they are [ other than the lead booking name ] is totally irrelevant and it's pretty clear to me that this was clearly being used as nothing but an excuse.
Different chains have different methods of deterring working girls but if this was Brittania.s Adelphi it will have been pretty cheap and not sophisticated in any way. The company I worked for used to challenge them and if after 5 mins the girl was still arguing her innocence they would totally change tack and be very apologetic and say ok thats fine but before we let you in we just need to take a quick pic so you don't get challenged again. What happened next depended on the girl's reaction but a hell of a lot would give up at that point and leave rather than have their pic taken some would argue the point but the interesting thing is very rarely did they involve their guest the client. The first he.d know the girl wasn't getting in was when he called her to find out where she was I assumed their thinking was less confrontation that way and if someone had genuinely been mistaken for a hooker it would all sort itself out.
Personally, I would have left and demanded a refund on the night but best of luck in getting it retrospectively knowing the chain involved.
On a similar theme, i`ve worked in large office buildings and they have a fire marshall for each floor.
When the alarm goes off, everyone buggers off, the fire marshall checks that no one is on that floor then reports to the " controller " - floor 1 clear, floor 2 clear etc
In a hotel, they would need a master key like the cleaners have to check each room or have a system of automatically unlocking all the doors in an emergency.
If it was me, i`d send a registered post letter off to the top dog at the hotel asking why their staff suggested that your niece, wife , daughter, auntie mother, granny was a prostitute and that you want a double refund for hurt of feelings.
If you were there on business and your employer has a contract with them, tell your procurement gaffer.
Got to know how to complain exponentially - a bit like a bad experience with an AW prossie, a shit review on her profile may cost her a couple of hundred quid - a shit review on here could cost her thousands .