What if you discover bed bugs in your hotel?

Use Coupon Code BBFREE at Checkout and receive Free Shipping on your entire order for a limited Time!

If you wake up with mysterious bites in a hotel room, it may be a sign of bed bugs. Recently a couple vacationing in Arizona called frantic with the discovery of bed bugs in their hotel room. They needed to know how to get out of that hotel without bringing bed bugs with them. They followed our advice below and came home without any hitch-hikers.

We know that hotels provide a perfect home for bed bugs allowing them to bite and hide, reproduce and go home with the next visitor in their luggage, leaving the baby bed bugs behind to travel home with the next visitor. While this is not the only way bed bugs are spread, it is a common way infestations get started after a vacation or business trip.

Need to talk about your bed bug problem with a sympathetic and informed listener?

Some signs your hotel room may have bed bugs.

Look for traces of pesticides or white powder around the perimeter of the room or around the base of the bed frame.

Small blood spots on the sheets or small black felt tip marker spots which could be bed bug excrement (bed bug poop).

If you look at the piping around the perimeter of the mattress or behind the headboard and see actual bed bugs, blood spots on the piping seams, or casts from molting.

If you wake up with mysterious bites this can be a sign but not a conclusive diagnosis of bed bugs.

 

 

Bites Don't Always Show Up Right Away

Entomologists agree that most people react within an hour to bed bug bites, however some people react hours or even days later, and a small percentage of the population (aproximately 30%) do not react at all.

How to get out of a hotel room if you discover bed bugs.

If you confirm bed bugs are in your hotel room, your number one goal is to get out of the hotel and back in your car without any bed bugs.

Here are the steps you can take to safely check out of an infested hotel.

Find a specimen and show it to the hotel manager or front desk. It is appropriate to expect a refund if you find bed bugs in your hotel room.

Do not hand the specimen over to the hotel in the event there is a dispute. Put it in a sealed bottle, ziplock bag, or sealed container and hold onto it, just be sure it's dead and/or can't get out of the jar, either or both of those.

You can add the hotel to the Bed Bug Registry website if you are inclined.

Take a photo of the hotel, your room, any evidence in the room such as blood spots around mattress seams, the front desk clerk and the bug with your cell phone or digital camera as evidence.

Ask the front desk or housekeeping for about 10-12 heavy duty trash bags with twist-ties and a clean flat white sheet. The heavy-duty large yard bags are what you are looking for.

Divide them into a group of "clean" bags for items you've treated or determined are bed bug free, and a group for "contaminated" items that cannot be treated on the spot.

Pull all the blankets and sheets off the bed if you have not already done so and spread the clean flat sheet you can spread on the bed to put your clean bags on. As long as you don't take bugs into your car or home with you is all that matters now.

Any bed bugs around the bed will probably remain out of site and the commotion will keep them hiding till the activity dies down. Bed bugs like things quiet and safe, so they will most likely hide the entire time. They cannot jump or fly and do not have wings.

Kill bed bugs on your clothes with heat in the dryer

Put all your clothes and other items that can be laundered and heated in a dryer, in one or two of the "contaminated" bags and take them to the hotel laundry and put them in the dryer for two hours.

After everything is in the dryer from the "contaminated" bag(s), dispose of the bag in an outside dumpster immediately. Later, you will put the clothes you have on in a contaminated bag, sealed, with other untreatable objects after the clean laundry is done with the cycles, and you'll deal with it later.

While your laundry is heating, put all your other untreated possessions like books and magazines, and uninspected luggage into one or more of the black trash bags and seal them tightly. Then put those bags in another trash bag and tightly twist-tie them closed tightly. This is just in case the first (inner) bag gets/has a hole in it.

This will probably include your luggage or backpacks if they are not in the dryer. If you feel confident you can inspect each and every item carefully for bugs or eggs and put them into the "clean" bags.

If you choose to inspect your items, see if the hotel will go to a drug store and get you a bottle of 90% or stronger rubbing alcohol, which you could wipe your luggage down, and which will kill bed bugs. Most pharmacies carry this but be sure it is 90% or better.

So let's assess where we are in the process.

The clothes and sneakers are in the dryer, contaminated unheatable objects are in double black trash bags and each bag (inner and outer) are sealed tightly.

Do not put anything on the floor. As soon as the contaminated bags are sealed tightly put them in the trunk of your car.

Extra bonus points if it's a really hot day, the kind that will make your trunk into an oven. It must be very hot in your trunk to kill bed bugs, and a sunny winter day won't work. It would have to be Las Vegas hot to work, so don't assume anything about the stuff in the trunk. Consider it contaminated with the possibility there are bed bugs in your stuff.

You have two or more unused bags left for the clothes you have on, and which we are calling contaminated. And several unused bags for the items in the dryer.

When the clean laundry is done, put it into the "clean" bags and put those in the back seat of your car, not in the trunk with the contaminated bags if you can avoid it. Getting those bags confused upon arriving home could be a disaster.

When you get home you can launder the dirty clothes and then decide what you are going to do with the contaminated objects in the bags. You could leave them sealed for 18 months which is enough time to ensure all bed bugs are dead, or you could get a Packtite bed bug heater and heat those objects to 120(F) for a few hours to ensure all bed bugs and eggs are dead. Follow directions on the Packtite to properly heat your items thoroughly.

Discovering bed bugs in a hotel is disturbing but at least you can deal with them then instead of bringing them home and creating an infestation that will cost hundreds of dollars to eliminate and cause much more stress.

 

Bed Bug Treatment for Cars

Detailing/Steam Cleaning: You may want to have your car steam cleaned or detailed upon arriving home, or do it yourself with a low moisture steam cleaner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*bedbugsnorthwest.com and the owner of the website, are not responsible for any damage to people or property resulting from any treatment, chemicals, or information you read about or use from information provided on this website. Most products advertised on this website are product the owners of this website also have used, and therefore recommend. Because trying to exterminate bed bugs is complex, and because personal behavior is a large factor in successful extermination, no one can guarantee any one method will be effective in your own personal infestation.