Worried About Bed Bugs In Your Hotel Room?
Bed bugs can quickly become a serious pest problem. Chances are if you have bed bugs, you brought them into your home while traveling. These pests do not travel on humans or animals, but on luggage, clothing, pillows, and other items you bring when you leave home.
Hotels, even the best kept hotels in the world, can end up with a bedbug infestation. How the hotel handles complaints and how fast they act to stop the spread of bugs is the most important question.
Bed Bugs in Hotels
Perhaps you are concerned about the hotel you’ll be staying at? Perhaps you are one of those unfortunate people who were bitten and would like to verify the hotel’s claim that such a problem has never occurred before?
Bedbugs are a global problem, so any traveler needs to understand how to protect themselves from bringing home bed bugs when traveling.
How to Check your Hotel for Bedbug Complaints
Here is a very efficient way of researching hotel bedbug complaints and it’s a completely free service.
As a first step, you can check the Bed Bug Registry to see if the hotel you are planning to visit has had a bed bug problem. If a bed bug problem is reported,only when not taken seriously and followed up thoroughly do they become a continual problem.
Bed Bug Travel Tips
A few spot check travel tips
Don’t bring home hitchhikers when traveling! Inspect your hotel room before you call it a night. Examine your luggage thoroughly with each new place you go. Wash and dry clothes with hot water and high heat as soon as you get home.
Before booking a hotel room, you may want to read user reviews of the particular hotel and location — frequently, guests who’ve had bug problems report them online. Bear in mind that a report about one hotel does not mean the issue wasn’t isolated to one room, or that hotel management hasn’t since exterminated.
Still concerned? Concerned travelers may want to check their bed for telltale signs of the bugs, a more common practice years ago. Before jumping into bed, here are a few spot check tips:
- Peel back the bed sheets and check the mattress, running your fingers along the upper and lower seams. Make sure to check the mattress tag, bed bugs often hide there.
- Experts recommend removing and examining the headboard if possible. Check for tiny black spots (excrement) that are smaller than poppy seeds. You may also see translucent light brown skins or, in the case of an infestation— live bugs.
- Check the bedside table. Look for signs of bed bugs in the drawers and along the wall on the side of the bed that is less likely to be disturbed by cleaning staff and guests.
- You may want to elevate suitcases and keep them off the floor, like on a luggage stand.
- If you see powder in the drawers or on the headboard, it is likely that the room has already been treated for bed bugs by an exterminator.
- If bed bugs are detected, travelers should request for another room. Be sure to inform hotel management.
- Just moving to a different room may not be the total answer. You should repeat the thorough inspection of any new or different room you are offered.
- When you pack to leave, inspect your luggage carefully first, and inspect every item as you pack to help detect any bugs or their signs. Laundering most cloth items with typical hot water and detergent followed by drying on low heat for at least 20 minutes (or standard dry cleaning) should kill all bed bugs in or on such items. Sealing freshly-laundered items inside a plastic bag should help keep any more bed bugs from getting in those items later to hide (and be carried back with you).
Professional vs. Do-It-Yourself Bed Bug Treatments
Although over-the-counter pesticide products that have “bed bug control” written on the label can be found on store shelves, they generally are not recommended. Performance of these products under actual field conditions is not known. If you need to use a pesticide, you are better off hiring a licensed, Minnesota professional pest control expert with experience in treating bed bugs.
For Guaranteed Bed Bug Removal MN, contact a Minnesota pest control expert as soon as possible!
Wallet-sized bed bug information cards for Travelers Download |