I think you will agree with me when I say Bedbugs in Hotels are a nightmare and not a great way to wake up from a cozy night’s sleep.
1. The size of a Bedbug can be compared to a lentil seed but if you have a clean and tidy bed they will be easy to spot and thusly treat!
2. Bedbugs can cause real damage to a hotel’s reputation, especially when potential customers are flicking through Trip Advisor and see pictures of nasty bites or read horrifying statuses on Facebook.
3. Bedbugs attack the skin, usually, the face, back, neck, and bite marks are usually positioned in a line or make a kind of pattern on the skin. Sounds nice but these marks can cause extreme itching which in turn puts the hotel guests in great discomfort.
4. When Bedbugs attack! Sounds like the name of a low-budget horror/sci-fi film but in reality, it’s a real question we can ask ourselves which could help prevent and make for easier treatment.
5. Bedbugs are actually a very intelligent kind of pest in that they wait until you’re asleep, specifically when they detect your heart rate is at a resting place. This is why people usually wake up with bumps, broken skin, and crazy itching symptoms.
6. Customers these days are open to the idea of suing and compensation, I blame the Americans really, but all trans-Atlantic jokes aside, bedbugs can leave a hotel owner out of pocket. Customers will request from Hotel Management to wash all their clothes, and linen and pay the dry-cleaning bill for that which isn’t cheap!
7. Even a change of rooms is what you’d hope would be the worst-case scenario or even a full refund but this is not only a monetary issue. It’s also a human resources issue. It can cause anxiety on the managerial staff and decrease staff morale, especially if the hotel is taken to court.
8. Customers, the staff and reputation aside the fixtures and furnishings are also at risk! Bedbugs can cause a lot of damage to the bedding, curtains, bedside cabinets which costs substantial amounts of money to dispose of. And to dispose anything responsibly these days means more money.
9. Spending time and money in treating rooms and ridding them of bedbugs is something of an invested interest to the Hotel Owner. There are different types of treatment including using dust which dehydrates and kills bedbugs but if the right amount of time is not given for the treatment to be active and then cleaned guest could be walking into a dusty room with dead bedbugs lurking around. And if a guest has Asthma it isn’t the greatest of situations to be sleeping with the arch nemesis, dust. Even for a healthy, non-asthmatic guest bedbugs can spread bacteria so all in all it’s not great and guests could even catch the flu or develop some sort of bacterial infection if worst comes to worst.
10. Bedbugs are not a type of guest you should welcome with open arms into your Establishment. Any Hotel is vulnerable to bedbugs as they are just something which people transfer. It’s a well-travelled pest. One day it’s staying at a gritty hostel in Amsterdam and the next day it could end up at the Ritz Hotel, it’s just unfortunate, being clean is not enough for these pests.
To conclude it would be naïve to say as a Hotel owner, “We don’t have a bedbug issue” or “We don’t need pest control services”. As you may have learned from this blog is that bedbugs and any pest issue for that matter could arise at any moment. Nobody is safe!
We always advise having regular, contractual visits from a professional pest control company. It’s in your invested interest. I would say you should sleep on it, but after what you’ve read today I think sleeping won’t come as easy. Sleep Tight and Don’t let the bedbugs bite.