I got bitten in a hotel that I stayed at in Buffalo late last year. Later, I was watching what I think was a rerun of "Shark Tank" where these women developed bed bug traps, which are placed in the corners between your mattress and box springs. This will likely tell you if you have bed bugs, but it's just a detection - no a solution. I purchased the traps at Home Depot. http://www.buggybeds.com/ Plan on taking them traveling.

To get rid of bed bugs the area has to be heated to above 120f for more than 2 hours.

Has anyone tried steam/vapour cleaners to treat these bugs? Some claim to kill them .e.g. Ladybug Tekno 2350, Vapamore MR100 Primo. If it takes 2 hours, may be impossible. They're fairly expensive but probably cheaper than refurnishing and the cost of pest control.

My FTer travel companion and I had our very first bed bugs experience this week.

Long story short. We were in a small town, in an independent hotel (rated #2 out of 12 on Tripadvisor). The night auditor came to our room as soon as we called, looked at the bugs (one I had bagged, the other still on the pillow), profusely apologized, and after we packed up, escorted us to another room, and said we would be issued a refund.

None of us had ever seen bed bugs before, but after comparing them to online photos, we're pretty positive.

The hotel/address isn't listed on bedbugregistry.com. And we thought they handled the situation well - immediately moved/assisted us, issued a refund, and said both rooms would be quarantined until a pest control company inspected/treated.

My dilemma is whether or not to report it. I'm torn between my public service duty to fellow travelers, and hoping this is an isolated incident and not wanting to ruin a small business in a small town.

Consider this. Bedbugs are hiders that you usually don't find unless you are looking in seams of the mattress. Because you found them out on the pillow soon after getting the room, I think it must have been a pretty heavy infestation. If so, you wouldn't have been the first to encounter and report the bedbugs.

What is a night auditor? Was he reviewing your financial statements?

Night Auditor, when referring to hotels, is the person whom oversees front desk operations overnight (usually between the hours of 2300 and 0700). S/he audits the room's financials (room rates, incidentals etc).

What are they doing to ensure that none travel home with you? I'd be very concerned.

I got bed bugs in my bag from the airplane's overhead storage in Business Class. The suitcase that was checked did not have bed bugs.

Points taken. My travel companion and I were in that town for one night and we'll never know what was what in regards to the degree of infestation in that room that night.

We spent 2 hours in the room immediately after check-in, went out for a ~4 hour drive, spent another 2 hours in the room, found the bugs, changed rooms, then went out for dinner. Remarkably, we are each long time FT members with ~45 countries under each of our belts, and we were caught unawares and were not prepared with information on how to deal with the situation, ie we were googling as we went.

My friend planned to ask the front desk at check-out for plastic garbage bags to contain our carry-ons, but in the morning, we were so preoccupied with booking our $29 JetBlue Leap Day tickets (priorities!), we forgot, dashed to top off the rental car's gas tank and to the airport.

Anyway, a week+ has passed at this point, and the call of civic duty is fading. But I will call the hotel for an update as I told them I would.

So for (hopefully not) future information, what should the hotel have done to ensure we did not transport bugs?

After getting bedbugs at home for the SECOND time I'll post my experience:
I got them the first time eleven years ago from a national branded hotel in a university town. I had my house tented to get rid of them because it is one treatment and your done. In December 2015 I stayed at the SAME hotel (it is a highly rated Tripadvisor hotel) and I did a cursory inspection for bedbugs in the hotel room during a two night stay. Five days after returning home I saw evidence of bedbugs on my mattress. I emailed the hotel general manager and they have filed a claim with their insurance company to cover treatment of my house. I bought a chest freezer and now I take universal precautions and the suitcases and everything in them go in the freezer and stay there for 4 days.

For those of you who check, do you only look for live bugs? What about evidence of past infestation, brown spots, etc. The former obviously warrants a complaint to management what about the latter?

Checking only for live bugs is not enough, as my understanding is that a lot of times they only come out at night to suck blood then disappear again. So you look for feces (clusters of little dark spots that are essentially dried blood) or little streaks of blood stain. But I'm not really sure how to identify them, as I'm not an expert. And I only look under the sheets and between the mattress and box spring. That's probably not enough, but I don't have 15 minutes to do a thorough inspection each time I check into a hotel.

Yeah, I am probably not gonna rip the bed apart to check, but wondering what the bare minimum is and what the bar is for complaint.

My guess is, you're more likely to find bug feces rather than live bugs. I think finding something like that is certainly grounds for at least a room change. However, I also think that many hotels will try to blow off or counter against such complaint. They may not be swayed unless there's live bug (or at least a dead bug), even though online resources say that bug feces are evidences of infestation.

I remain amazed at how little interest there is in this topic. Bed bugs must be pretty darn rare. With about 100 different hotel stays a year for well over a decade all over the world in different types of lodging, I'd be a prime candidate to have this problem, but nothing. Fingers crossed.

I'm with you. I go through life doing none of the things others obsess over. I don't put the remote in a ziplock bag, I don't wash out the glasses with super hot water, I don't look for bedbugs, I don't travel with lysol spray and hose down the room, I don't travel with my own set of sheets. Yet, I've never had any health problems related to hotel stays.

I remember when I got bedbugs in my apartment several years back during college before I started traveling so no idea how they got into my apartment.

I noticed them in the summer when my roomate had already left back home for the summer so that made alternative sleeping arrangements easy by using his bed for a few days.

I had to throw away my bed and get a new one, but before I put the new one in I went to the kitchen and boiled a few pots of water. I took the pots and splashed it all over the walls and floor. Remember pesticides dont seem to work but no bug is immume to intense heat. You gotta fry them suckers.

Then gave a few days for my room to dry, then when I brought in my new bed I stuck the legs in a bowl filled with diatomecious earth just in case if there were any stragglers. The powder will kill any bug who tried to climb up to my bed.


Even at home, its usually a good idea to have your bed legs resting in a bowl of diatomecious earth. If you managed to bring a few bugs home with you and they try to get into your bed, they would be killed by the powder before ever reaching your bed.

I found one on my pillowcase right as I was falling asleep at a brand new national chain. I captured it in a cup and bag and brought to front desk. Was given a new room and in morning spoke with manager. She confirmed it was a bed bug and refunded my room. I stripped naked in garage at home and everything I had with me was in downstairs freezer for weeks. This was a nice hotel. I'd rather not mention the chain but was a $150/night room or so. Manager said she wanted my business back and to call her next time through. Well 8 months later when I was back in town they were top ranked hotel in town and rates were $225/night.

This can and does happen in all kinds of hotels. I spend a lot of nights in hotels and since that night I hardly ever sleep as well.

Another place bedbugs hang out is the the corner of the ceiling nearest the bed. You can see live bugs and/or brown dots (feces) there if it is a pretty bad infestation. When you are asleep, they drop on you from the ceiling.

Little bowls of dirt in the bedroom are not a good idea if you have cats. :D

Bed Bugs...& Post-Bed Bugs Remediation (AKA I don't want to bring these home with me)
 

I searched but didn't find a relevant thread, so feel free to direct me elsewhere if I'm repeating things.

It was bound to happen eventually to me...and the dreaded moment has finally arrived. Woke up this morning to big, red, itchy welty bites all over my arms and legs. 99% this hotel room has bedbugs and I've been bit...thanks hotel....I'm super pissed...and itchy....but more focused on "what now." Also trying to be realistic here...the hotel might not even know they have this problem...this is a "resort" too (:rolleyes:).

I'm due to check-out this morning anyways (travel a lot for work) - staying in another city tonight, then several more stops (/cities/hotels) for the next two weeks before I go home for a few days in mid-October.

I need your suggestions/advice:

1- I do NOT NOT NOT want to bring these home with me. I'm on the road for the next two weeks, then I'm home for a few days before hitting the road again. Anything I can do to stop any potential infestation from coming home with me? How long do bedbugs live in your clothes/suitcase (if they get in there)?

2- I rarely take my stuff out of my suitcase/packing cubes (switching hotels/traveling too often to do that), but OF COURSE MURPHY'S LAW, yesterday evening I took all my clothes out to repack some and was looking for an earring I couldn't find and thought I'd dropped in my bag...and I LEFT ALL MY CLOTHES ON THE OTHER BED IN THE ROOM OVERNIGHT (I have a room with 2 beds). I won't be in a place where I can get something dry cleaned until 2.5 days from now (won't be anywhere long enough), but once I am there, should I get everything dry cleaned? Or is it better NOT to dry clean?

3- I am traveling for work, so I don't need/want a discount, $$ off my bill, etc. -- it's not my money (work is paying). That said, anyone ever been successful in getting a hotel to pay for your dry cleaning after something like this?

4- How can I make sure I am not bringing them with me to the next five hotels I am staying at in the next 2 weeks?

Wish me luck. I am currently sitting on the bathroom toilet while typing this (not to sound weird - I just don't want to sit on anything upholstered in the room right now). When I go downstairs to check out, I'm going to ask to speak with the manager. I'm currently wearing a skirt, so I can show him/her all of the lovely welts/bites up and down my legs (:eek:). Don't worry, I'm going to ask to speak with him/her privately and discreetly and explain I don't want remuneration, I just want to help ensure no one else ever has to experience this....

First off, the bites don't always appear instantly, so it's not certain that you were bit at this hotel.

Search for the bugs (or evidence of them) in the room. Google it.

Second, order a PackTite and have it waiting for you at home. Cook everything in the PackTite before taking it inside and the bugs and their eggs will be good and dead.

It wouldn't bother me if you ran downstairs and yelled at the clerk.

I suggest buying a new change of clothes and bring them bagged into the bathroom and off of the floor. When you leave the hotel (soon I hope), shower, change into your new clothes, and leave what you don't need behind.

Arriving home, strip in your garage and keep everything you brought with you in the garage for a period of time until you are sure it's all free of bugs and eggs.

In hundreds of hotel rooms, I only got hit once by bedbugs. It was a light infestation at a non-chain hotel in Budapest. Besides the bites, I could spot the little buggers in the bottom end of the sheets.

Well, that's a terrifying image.

I also happened to be bitten by bed bugs last summer in a Japanese ryokan.
I Googled 'bed bugs' and found some people recommend to put all your stuff in the freeezer for some time, this will kill the bugs and eggs. A number of people told me the same thing.

Luckily, I had not left my stuff around the room and had closed my suitcase, so I was lucky enough not to bring any bugs with me. I just washed everything fom my suitcase when I came back home, and left the suitcase itself open, outdoors, for a few hours, and that was it.

Always report!
 

If you encounter beg bugs in any accommodation, you must report this immediately. Otherwise the provider has no chance to do something about it and you may help spreading the critters further.
I had one such encounter in a 4-star resort and rang reception in the middle of the night. The panic scream of the receptionist was followed by immediate relocation into a different, nicer room. We were not billed for our 3-night stay, offered medical treatment, anti-histamin cream and a nice bottle of wine.
The professional pest control man explained the next morning that they had found the colony behind the bed's headboard, and would have to strip the room of all fittings, fumigate, burn the mattress and dryclean all furnishings- a costly 4-week job.
The bugs are tiny and easily hitch rides in people's luggage, and using the metal stand for your suitcases is a good idea. Looking for them on arrival is pretty hopeless, as they hide from light and are not larger than a tiny ant if not filled with your blood.
Unfortunately this can happen in all categories of accommodation and is no reflection on hygiene standards. Given the resort's thorough response, I did not post any negative feedback on review sites.

I haven't read all the previous messages in this thread (although quite a few) so I apologise if this has been mentioned before, but it is always worth considering whether the infestation is actually with animal fleas rather than bedbugs.

This is most likely if the hotel allows pets (mainly dogs) to stay in rooms with guests, and it is very common. The fleas lay eggs in the carpet and when these hatch they release ravenous fleas that will bite any passing animal, including humans!

There are some distinguishing features of this: the bites are mostly on feet/ankles and upper limbs rather than head and shoulders and body; they are said to be randomly distributed rather than in short lines of bites (although I have most certainly personally had cat flea bites in short lines on my ankles and lower legs - from our own cat!); they become itchy very soon after biting; you can often see fleas jumping on to your legs from the carpet; you get bitten at any time of day and not just at night. The bites are said to look different from bedbug bites but, despite being a medic, I am not confident I could reliably tell them apart just by looking at individual ones.

The most important thing is that cat & dog fleas will NOT travel with you or your belongings to your home or the next hotel: you might want to wash clothing etc but there is absolutely no need to throw anything away or freeze it or douse it in noxious chemicals. Cat & dog fleas only travel on cats or dogs.

Hope that helps.

Not been bothered by one ever, but that solution with the special earth, sounds like it should work (couldn't spell it)

With 90-116 hotel nights yearly for short of three decades, never seen any bugs, nor stains that could represent feces. If I had, a report would be mandatory.

While I got 2 dozens severe bites in just a few hours, my husband had none. Maybe you met some bed bugs and they were just not interested in your skin type.

Read the reviews on Amazon.

Rental car
 

Just an idea, but wouldn't leaving luggage open in a rental car passenger area parked in the sun for a few hours get the cabin above 120F to kill any bugs? It's probably not good enough in the winter or in an area with lots of prowlers though.

Of course, rental cars can have bed bugs too (and maybe if this catches on more of them will) but you hear about that much less than hotels perhaps because of the temperature swings.