Good hotels need a bed bug prevention and control plan in place. Beyond the itching and the bite marks, these pests can follow your customers home and cause problems long after their stay in your establishment.
Nothing can sink your reputation faster than an outbreak of bed bugs, but the chemical pesticides and other methods used by many pest control companies offer solutions that are often as bad as the original problem. Seeking green professional exterminators can help the infestation, but before it gets to that point, take some time to prevent bed bugs from taking hold in your hotel. Keeping your hotel green and safe is a lot easier when you follow the ABCs of bed bug prevention.
A: Acquire Knowledge and Educate Staff
The most effective way to get rid of bed bugs is to never have them in the first place. To prevent bed bugs, you and your staff need to understand what they are and how they spread. The first step is to stay up-to-date on bed bug infestations locally, and new prevention and elimination techniques.
The Bed Bug Registry is a public bed bug tracker; you don’t want your hotel to make this list. You can, however, use the website to stay ahead of local infestations or bed bug problems in cities frequented by your guests.
Bed Bug Basics
Learning about bed bugs may not be pleasant, but it is a crucial component of bed bug prevention. Here are some basic bed bug facts you can use to make informed decisions on your hotel’s pest control.
What do bed bugs look like?
Adult bed bugs (Cimex lectularius L.) are small insects with three segments and are either brown ovals or reddish balloon-shaped. To the casual observer, they look like small dark spots of mold or apple seeds. Bed bug eggs and young nymphs are white or translucent and are hard to see with the naked eye.
Bed bug infestations smell musty and sweet, much like slightly moldy berries.
How do bed bugs spread?
People often transport bed bugs without realizing they are carrying these little hitchhikers. Because their bodies are flat, they can squeeze through small cracks in walls, seams, and closed zippers. There is a common misconception that bed bugs mean a place is unsanitary, but this isn’t true. Bed bugs can find favorable conditions in five-star resorts as easily as a couch thrown out on the curb. They are not exclusive to the United States.
Why are they called bed bugs?
Their preferred habitat is warm, dry, dark places where they have easy access to blood from the human body or other warm-blooded animals. Despite their moniker, beg bugs aren’t exclusive to beds; they can be found on couches, chairs, rugs, curtains, and other soft surfaces.
Inspection Education: How to Check for Bed Bugs
The second line of defense in bed bug prevention is training your staff, especially the housekeeping and maintenance departments, on what bed bugs look like, what signs to watch for, how to thoroughly inspect rooms, and what precautions to take. Remember, once a guest complains of bed bug bites, you must act quickly to contain the problem and avoid cascading outbreaks. The good news is that there are effective methods to avoid bed bugs in hotel rooms.
Bed Inspections
Make sure housekeeping pays special attention to the bed by pulling back linens and checking around the mattress, mattress cover, box spring, and bed frame. Check all the nooks and crannies in the headboard. Pests are often found in mattress seams and corners or bed sheets. Signs of bed bugs include small black dots or blood stains about the size of ground pepper. The smell of the bed is an important thing to note as well. They can often be misidentified as mold, so the staff should also be on the lookout for actual bed bugs at this stage.
Room Inspections
A bed free of these insects does not mean the room is also clear. Bed bugs can be found living and breeding in an approximately 15-foot radius around the bed, in chairs, sofas, and other areas. Furniture, picture frames, nightstands, tissue boxes, drawers, and paper products should be examined. Remember to check the closets, luggage rack, and curtains, too. You will rarely find bed bugs in the bathroom, but it should be checked as well. Bed bugs are hardy and can go a long time without feeding.
Maintenance
Housekeeping isn’t the only department that aids in bed bug prevention. Maintenance crews need to repair tiny cracks in the walls, peeling wallpaper, damaged baseboards, and other potential bed bug hiding places. When maintenance personnel work in a room, they can also conduct a search for bed bug activity.
B: Build a Bed Bug Protocol
Every hotelier needs an action plan to prevent and eliminate a bed bug infestation. Take everything you know about bed bugs and formulate a protocol to ensure guest and employee safety, protect your hotel’s reputation, and avoid expensive lawsuits. Hotels are legally responsible for keeping their guests safe in a habitable environment. If you have a bed bug infestation, you can be sued by the guest if they can prove negligence. Know your state laws and regulations on bed bugs and pesticide rules.
Your best practices protocol should include:
- Information about bed bugs.
- Preventative measures used like mattress encasements.
- Inspection checklists.
- Infestation protocols such as quarantining the room, placing infested items in a sealed plastic bag, providing personal protection equipment (PPE) for staff entering and cleaning the room, and how to treat an infestation.
DIY Additional Prevention Practices and Treatment
There are additional measures you can use to avoid a bed bug problem or to start a bed bug treatment program. Some of these preventative practices and DIY treatments include:
- Covers: A bite-proof, zippered box spring and mattress encasement may remove a lot of bed bug hiding places and are generally cheaper than a new mattress.
- Steam: Steam clean beds, bedding, floors, and other soft surfaces.
- Vacuum Cleaners: Use a brush that can comb through carpet fibers combined with filters and strong suction. Be sure to seal the vacuum bag and discard it immediately.
- Traps: Various sticky pad traps placed strategically around the bed legs can help catch bed bugs, but they are messy and not safe around children and pets.
- Heat: Use your washing machine to launder linens in hot water for 90 minutes at 113–118 degrees Fahrenheit, and use high heat in the clothes dryer. Bed bugs die in very high temperatures, so assuring you have a consistent hot water supply for laundering and sanitizing is vital.
Depending on the severity of the infestation, you may have multiple treatment options. Many experts suggest avoiding bug bombs or aerosol sprays containing pyrethroids, which only fog the room and force the bed bugs to spread to other rooms, especially if the room isn’t sealed properly.
Bug bombs, insecticide sprays, and products containing silica aerogel may kill bed bugs, but they also create insecticide dust that may cause severe allergic reactions or irritate parts of the respiratory system. Be aware of your local and state pesticide regulations. For example, using diatomaceous earth that is not a registered pesticide is illegal and dangerous. Whichever treatment you choose, be sure to follow the label directions exactly.
For the safest, most effective bed bug prevention and treatment, calling eco-friendly professional pest control companies may be your best choice.
C: Consult an Eco-Friendly Professional
Despite your best efforts, an infestation may still occur, and your protocols should include getting professional help from pest control experts if you don’t have the capacity to eliminate bed bugs completely.
If your guests report bed bugs in a room or show bite marks, take that report very seriously. Immediately move the guests to a room at least two floors away (if possible), send staff to do a proper inspection, and begin your bed bug protocols.
Bed bugs can travel through the electrical sockets and other spaces in the walls so that one affected area may not be an isolated incident. Travelers are aware of the threat bed bugs pose, so they should be happy with swift action to get out of a dangerous situation. It’s better to take precautions and find no bed bugs in a room than to ignore a complaint and open your hotel up to litigation.
It’s important to note that hotel guests also prefer green initiatives. From sustainable practices in the kitchen to resource reduction, most people today want to avoid leaving a large carbon footprint and damaging the environment. Your patrons will appreciate your efforts to make bed bug removal safer by using natural ways that avoid more harmful chemicals.
One eco-friendly option used by pest control companies is known as thermal remediation. This method turns the heat up on the bed bugs past 120 degrees Fahrenheit and sweats them out. Heat treatment works best in rooms with every crack and crevasse sealed. If any of the bugs can flee to an area outside the thermal remediation, the problem can return. Green-certified exterminators know how to properly handle this process. One thing they’ll find helpful is the removal of anything affected by high heat, like candles, aerosol cans, and the like.
Another method freezes the bed bugs out. Cryonite is a non-toxic pest control treatment popularized in Europe. The machine sprays carbon dioxide frozen to -110 degrees Fahrenheit below zero (creating dry ice) and kills bugs that touch the deadly snow. It’s more expensive than a regular chemical treatment, but it’s very effective against bugs and safer for the environment.
There are also professional canine inspection services you can hire that use bedbug detection dogs to sniff out potential infestations so you don’t have to, saving time and staff resources. Either way, take steps to make sure that the room stays all clear after an inspection. Mattress and pillow encasements are standard in hotels for this very reason. They keep bed bugs and other pests from taking root inside bedding. Put regular application of eco-friendly repellants on your preventative maintenance schedule by putting those repellants on exterior walls to keep bugs out. EcoSmart has an entire line of pest sprays that are organic and environmentally friendly.
Bed bugs are the latest pests to cause massive headaches for hotel owners, especially as guests’ expectations of hotel experiences change. However, there are methods to prevent and eliminate them that don’t cause environmental damage or expensive chemical treatments. The best defense starts with prevention. Look for evidence in your bedding or anywhere else in a room where you suspect there might be bugs. Take any reports from your guests seriously. When the time comes to call in the pros, explore your eco-friendly options. Thermal remediation or Cryonite can drive bugs out through extreme temperatures. Once you can see your hotel is bed bug-free, you’ll be the one who sleeps easily every night.
