Bed bugs are a worldwide epidemic and anyone can carry bed bugs into a hotel. Bed bugs do not discriminate and can be easily brought in to your hotel. Employees should not panic if a customer approaches them with a bed bug. Always stay calm when talking to a guest. Calmly get the sample or have the suite inspected asap to determine bed bug activity. Move the guest to a new guest room outside the adjacent rooms, as the guest room will be put out of service until a treatment program is implemented. Please note, bite marks do not indicate it’s from bed bugs, you must have a bed bug sample or evidence to determine bed bug biting activity.
To address the very real introduction of bed bugs into your hotel, pre-emptive training for all hotel staff on bed bug identification and biology should be done on a yearly or bi-yearly training program. When a guest comes to your staff with a bed bug concern, be sure to follow the guidelines below:
- Obtain a positive identification of bed bug(s) in the guest room at the hotel.
- Place the guest room out of service until a treatment program is completed and the surrounding adjoining rooms that will be inspected for bed bug evidence.
- Immediately notify management of the discovery, management needs to contact Poulin’s Pest Control for a bed bug treatment program.
- The suspected bed bug rooms’ linens are to be bagged, sealed and placed into a secure location so they can be properly laundered to kill all stages of bed bugs. The linen should be dried first. Place linen in the dryer to kill bed bugs and eggs. After drying the linen, they can be washed.
- Inspect the entire guest room for additional signs of bed bug activity, examples include but are not limited to: live bed bugs, spotting from fecal matter, exoskeletons, and eggs. Locations where bed bugs can hide are behind or in headboards, mattress and box spring seams, coffee tables, chairs, couches, baseboards, lamps, radios, telephones, dressers, curtains, curtain railings, TV’s fridges, pictures, electrical outlets, air conditioners, etc.
- Hotel employees should never ‘self treat’ bed bugs in the guest rooms. This can cause the bed bugs to spread even further and push them into other adjacent guest rooms. Let the professionals handle this.
- Never put a guest room back into service until all bed bug activity has been eliminated.
- Place out glue boards, Climb Up monitors, SenSci Volcanos, or other monitors in the guest rooms as a monitoring tool for future bed bug detections.
If your hotel does not have a bed bug plan or procedure in place, please contact one of our offices nearest you today! Being proactive and educating your staff is a key component to bed bug control.