What to Do If You Find Bed Bugs in Your Hotel Room
Nobody needs bed bugs. You don’t need bed bugs. The hotel you’re staying at doesn’t need bed bugs, but it’s possible it has them. We have tips on how to check your hotel room for bed bugs, but what if you actually find them? You don’t want to risk bringing these guys home.
Be careful from the start
When you first enter your hotel room, don’t put your suitcase or yourself on the bed. The same goes for a sofa or any other upholstered furniture. Roll your suitcase into the bathroom and leave it there for now. You can put your purse on the counter or even on the table, but honestly, right now the safest place for all your stuff is in the tub.
Bed bugs can be found in any type of hotel, so don’t assume that the hotel you’re staying in is so good or so clean that you don’t need to check it out. Details on where to look and what to look for are here . In short: lift the sheets and mattress covers in the corners and inspect them for stains or gritty black or brown stains.
Bed bugs live in dark crevices, out of sight, but every night they come out for a bloody meal (also known as you). They may hide in and around beds, including headboards and picture frames; check around the edges of those, too. And despite the name, they can also live in non-bed furniture, such as sofas. So check out these places.
What does a bed bug look like
If you find bed bugs on your mattress or elsewhere, take a moment to check your suspicions. There are plenty of websites out there that will show you all the gory details of what a bed bug infestation looks like, so I’ll spare you the illustrations here. This FAQ from Reddit’s bed bug forum has a good summary of what you’re looking for and also includes information on a few similar species that are n’t bed bugs.
Because, to be honest: many people don’t know what bed bugs look like . If you spot a bug in your hotel room, it’s only fair to suspect bed bugs, but be sure to check your sighting in case you’ve just come across an ant, carpet bug, or cockroach . These guys may not be the best roommates, but they are nothing compared to the horror of bringing a bed bug infestation home.
Just because you’ve found ants or cockroaches doesn’t mean you’re safe. You may have cockroaches and bed bugs. I’m just saying.
What to do first
So you’ve found what you’re pretty sure is bed bug proof. The first thing I would do after (or in the process of) identifying what I found is to take clear photos in case they come in handy when filing a complaint or requesting a refund at company headquarters.
Next, your luggage! Is it in the bath? If yes, then it is safe now. If not, put it in the bath. Bed bugs can crawl into your bags and thus hitchhike home. If there’s a chance they got in while you weren’t looking (for example, if you didn’t find the bugs until after spending a few nights in the room), treat your suitcase as potentially contaminated until you be able to completely clean it and everything in it. But that’s for later.
Now you need to figure out where you’re going to spend the night, because ideally it wo n’t be this bed bug infested hotel room. Contact the front desk and explain the problem. Some states have laws that require any room with bed bugs to be destroyed before anyone can use the room again. You can reasonably expect the hotel to try to move you to another room or allow you to cancel your booking and go somewhere else.
If they want to move you to another room, ask that it be as far away from the infected room as possible. A room right next door, directly above or below it can also be infected. Insist on seeing the new room before agreeing to stay there.
Another thing to do while a hotel employee is apologizing to you is to ask for trash bags. If you have bed bugs in your suitcase, you don’t want to bring them to your next home. And if you didn’t, you could understandably be paranoid about the possibility. Wrap your bags in plastic for the rest of your trip.
How bad is it to stay in bed with possible bed bugs?
What if you have no other choice, or you find bugs after you’ve already spent the night in a cursed room? How dangerous is it to wake up with bed bug bites?
The good news is that bed bugs do not transmit disease through their bites. They can transmit Chagas disease through their feces, although bed bugs, related to kissing bugs, are the normal vector for this disease. What this means for you: Don’t scratch bed bug bites until you’ve washed the skin around them.
Okay, now time for the bad news. Bed bug bites are not fun. Most often there are several bites in groups or in a row. They are a bit like mosquito bites and itchy. You won’t notice anything while being bitten , but you may feel itchy the next day or even a few days later.
If you’ve been bitten by a lot of bed bugs, you may have lost sensitivity to them. Or maybe you’re just lucky – people’s reactions are different, and some don’t react at all.
If you need to stay in a place where bed bugs might be, take some plastic sheeting and place it on top of the bed without letting it touch the floor or other objects (pull the bed away from the headboard). You can put clean sheets on top of the plastic, but make sure your bedding is not touching the floor. Sleeping on such a plastic bed is relatively safe.
How to protect yourself from bringing bed bugs home?
Okay, let’s talk about the suitcase. Bed bugs can get in there because they’re looking for cover, but they can also follow the smell of your dirty laundry. If you can’t wrap your entire suitcase in plastic, at least pack your laundry.
Sort the laundry while you are still in the contaminated area. Anything labeled “dry clean only” should not be machine washed, but is generally safe to send to the dryer. Sort the rest of your laundry in the usual way and schedule your wash in the hottest, harshest conditions that won’t ruin your clothes. If something can be washed in hot water, then, by God, you can wash it in hot water. Seal laundry before taking it home or to the laundry; if there are bugs in the bags, you don’t want them to come out.
At home or anywhere else you can, empty your suitcase and vacuum the entire suitcase, inside and out , including all pockets, nooks and crannies. Do this outdoors if you can, and seal the debris when you take it out of the vacuum.
The University of Minnesota has a guide to washing clothes to kill bed bugs . Tip: 30 minutes in the dryer at high temperature will kill bed bugs. You can use this treatment on clothes that do not need to be washed or that do not need to get wet (for example, items intended for dry cleaning only).
By the way, be careful with these bags. The manual has instructions for sealing an empty, used bag so the insects inside can’t get out of the trash. And you’ll want to immediately put your clothes in clean bags (don’t trust the folding laundry table) and keep them closed until you’re in a place you know is free of bed bugs.
What about things that I can’t wash?
Here’s some more good news: While bed bugs can be hard to find, they’re pretty easy to kill. They don’t handle extreme temperatures well, so one way to kill them is to leave your belongings in a hot car or trash bag for a few days and let the summer sun bake them to death. (The University of Minnesota says heat isn’t reliable enough; Texas A&M’s expansion supports this technique if you can heat the contents of a bag to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. I suspect this approach works better in Texas than Minnesota.)
Freezing is also an option. To kill bed bugs, they must be kept below freezing for four days ; consider using a thermometer to monitor the process, especially for large items that may have a cold surface but not the inside. The University of Minnesota warns that outside temperatures are usually not consistent enough to freeze things simply by leaving them outside during the winter; a real freezer will do the job better.
Hard surface items such as wooden or plastic toys can be wiped down. However, watch out for cracks and crevices; little beetles love to hide. It is possible to fumigate small items with the kits you can buy if you can’t find another way to kill the bugs.