Bed bugs are a common – and commonly dreaded – issue for nearly all hotels. Travelers pick up bed bugs from their homes or other hotels, then leave their luggage tucked away for months between trips. This is just one of many ways bed bugs travel. By the time complaints of bed bugs start popping up in your business’s reviews, it might already be time to call the pros. Here are the signs you may have an infestation:
Signs of Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are great at hiding. Rather than building nests, they make their homes by finding other bed bugs and hiding away with them. However, bed bugs are easy to detect because they leave messy trails behind. Blood stains on pillows or sheets may appear. Dark or rusty spots on walls, mattresses and bed dressings might be bed bug droppings. Bed bugs also leave egg shells and shed skins when they reproduce and molt. Not only do they leave these little messes, they also excrete a distinctive musty odor. If you see or smell any of these signs, your property probably has bed bugs.
How to Check the Bed
Fortunately for anyone looking for an infestation, bed bugs typically leave evidence behind right where their name suggests — the bed. To check a bed for bed bugs, remove all bedding, including dust covers, to see the entire mattress and box springs. Check the seams of the mattresses and the wooden part of the bed springs for eggs, skins or droppings. Also check the headboards, especially where they meet the mattresses. If you are not sure what you are seeing, our team of pest control experts can help determine if it is, in fact, bed bugs.
Where Else to Check
Chances are, if you are looking at the bed, you have found evidence of any active bed bugs. However, these critters love to hide. Start with areas around the bed. Look around, under and inside the drawers of bedside tables. Open books, lift up telephones, and look inside electrical outlets. Inspect the edge of the carpet where it meets the wall and the area where the wall meets the ceiling. Look behind the art hanging on the wall. Once you have looked in all those places, take a look in the closet, inspecting luggage racks and ironing boards. Luggage racks may be how the bugs traveled to the room in the first place.
How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs
Once bed bugs have found a home at your hotel, getting rid of them may seem like an insurmountable task. The first step will be to launder every item that has been inspected. Clean the entirety of the infested room, removing drawers from the dressers, dismantling bed frames, and taking special care in problem areas. If you want to make sure you took care of everything, call a professional pest control company.
Bed bugs are a common type of pest that causes a lot of trouble. If you have bed bugs in one room, you may have an infestation that has spread into several. When you see signs of bed bugs, give our pest control experts at Pro-Staff a call at 515-279-7378 or contact us online.
