A lot of folks travel during the holiday season, taking trips out of town to see family and friends anywhere between the middle of November through the early part of January.
If you’re among those people, be careful some uninvited guests don’t come home with you — bedbugs are a serious problem these days in hotels throughout the nation.
By law, the premises of a hotel should be safe for guests — and that includes being free of insect infestations. However, bedbugs have become resistant to the common bug sprays available and most hotel owners are reluctant to pay the expenses of a professional bedbug removal service.
A bedbug infestation can be more than just inconvenient:
- Some people have painful allergic reactions to the bites and have to be hospitalized, which can cause them to miss work and lose income.
- Clothing, books, suitcases, purses, shoes and even electronics can end up being hiding places for the bugs — which mean everything that is infested stands the potential of being ruined.
- If the bedbugs make it back to your home, you face costly treatments to decontaminate your house — including things like boarding pets, having to stay in a hotel while your own home is treated and potentially having to replace furniture, mattresses or bedding that can’t otherwise be guaranteed to be bug-free.
The best thing, of course, is to avoid staying in a hotel that’s infested. Here are some quick tips to use to make sure a room is safe before you stay there:
- Leave all your personal items in the car while you inspect the hotel room.
- Peek underneath the sheet and look at the actual mattress pad and mattress itself. Do you see brown or black shell casings left from the bugs? Do you see drops or smears of dried blood? If so, stay somewhere else!
- Using a flashlight, look behind mirrors, picture frames, furniture and anywhere close to where humans would sleep or sit. If you see live bedbugs or signs of dead ones, get out.
If you do fall victim to bedbugs while you’re away, you’ll probably notice the tell-tale bites or drops of blood on the sheets the next morning. Notify management immediately — that can help protect your rights if you have to eventually seek help from a personal injury attorney to recover your losses.
Source: www.bedbugs.umn.edu, “Inspecting Your Hotel Room for Bed Bugs,” accessed Nov. 24, 2017
