Contrary to popular belief, bed bugs do not appear because of dirty environments. According to the US government organization Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “bed bugs have been found in five-star hotels and resorts and their presence is not determined by the cleanliness of the living conditions where they are found.”

In the past, CDC says that they have been a problem in developing countries but lately, they have been spreading more in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and central Europe.

Week 1 Bed bug infestations typically start with just a couple of bed bugs who have been brought into a hotel room via one of your guest’s luggage. Once they are in the room, mated female bed bugs lay around 3-5 eggs a day (about 500 eggs within one lifetime) and feed every couple of days. After 10 days the eggs hatch and bed bug nymphs (young bed bugs) begin immediately to feed.

Week 2 Within two weeks, what started as a couple of bed bugs has become an infestation of 20+ nymph bed bugs with 50 eggs about to hatch within the next few days. These are still almost invisible to the human eye.

Week 4-6 Nymphs pass through five stages before reaching maturity and require a blood meal in between each stage to level up. Within six weeks of the introduction of the first couple of bed bugs, the infestation will have developed into 20+ adult bed bugs, 150 nymph bed bugs, and 50 eggs about to hatch within the next 10 days.

By this time two dramatic things have happened:

• On the one hand, the first bed bug nest has become too small for all the bed bugs and they’ve started to spread in the room and between rooms in search for more space.
• On the other hand, the new adults will start mating with each other and laying eggs: the population growth becomes exponential. At this point, the infestation has also affected the stay of tens of guests. The longer it takes to detect bed bugs, the more catastrophic their damage becomes.

Bed bugs can cause large economic losses for a hotel. Since bed bugs breed quickly, it is not uncommon for them to spread into a whole floor or wing. The more infested rooms there are, the higher the economic loss is.

In the short term..

• Bed bug infestations result in lost room revenue for multiple nights across multiple rooms.
• You have to pay treatment fees related to the extermination like inspections and heat treatment.

• There are costs related to room refurbishing for unusable furniture.

In the long term..

• According to a 2015 study by the University of Kentucky, even a single online report of bed bugs in a hotel can lower the room value by up to $38.
• Reviews that mention bed bugs are very likely to make travelers pick another hotel instead, which reduces the hotel’s overall occupancy and revenue.

Bed bug infestations can cause permanent damage to the reputation of a hotel with the rise of social media, OTAs and online review sites. The revenue loss of a negative bed bug review can be in the tens of thousands of euros.

Bed bugs are not a pest you can easily control yourself. Exterminators are needed if you get an infestation and they use a variety of methods to kill bed bugs. The two most popular treatments are using heat or pesticides. However, no method is foolproof and several attempts may be required to completely exterminate all bed bugs.

The amount of treatment varies depending on the size of the infestation. A small infestation can be treated reliably and quickly. If the infestation is in a later stage, the room walls have to be torn down and a major refurbishment done to completely remove the bed bugs. In addition, adjacent rooms are treated as well. The total cost of replacing furniture like the bed, replacing wallpaper and floor in a room can cost up to €20,000.

When getting rid of bed bugs in your hotel you have two main choices between heat or pesticides treatments. In addition to choosing the method it is always recommended to contract an experienced company to minimize the probability of having to treat the room multiple times.

Heat treatment Heat treatment is generally considered better, although slightly more expensive. The treatment works by heating the entire room and blowing hot air at furniture to kill bed bugs with high temperatures. It eliminates the problems with fewer treatments and the room can be immediately occupied after the first treatment. However, certain materials like laminates, glues, or plastics that might be a part of the interior design do not withstand the 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) heat and can make heat treatments a non-viable option.

Pesticide treatment Pesticides are a more common way to treat bed bugs due to its low price. Some issues should be considered before using pesticide treatment.

After the treatment the room must be unvacated from half a day to several days depending on the pesticides used. During this time it is recommended that the room is not occupied by any guests. The effectiveness of the treatment is only revealed after a few weeks as the pesticides can take a long time to kill the bed bugs.

The worse the infestation, the more unlikely it is that pesticides work on the first treatment. Sometimes the infestation has to be treated up to five times before it is eliminated. Combining this with the unvacated period after treatments this can leave your hotel room unoccupied for a long time.

To effectively apply the pesticide the exterminator must have access to all places bed bugs might hide in. Depending on the room, this can include obvious places like behind the head board, or less obvious places like cracks or holes in the floor and wall. Some interior designs or fixed furniture can make pesticide based extermination more difficult.

Step 1 - Inspection and cleaning First, the room where bed bugs have been identified is inspected to find out the extent of the infestation. Then it is cleaned up, anything that can be removed (such as bedding, linens or curtains) are taken away in plastic bags and washed in a temperature above 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) which will kill bed bugs and their eggs. Sometimes the bed mattress and the bed itself need to be replaced. Replacement depends on the level of infestation in the bed. Infested beds are difficult to salvage, but more high end beds might be worth it. All furniture needs to be thoroughly treated or removed to eliminate the possibility of a new infestation.

Step 2 - Treatment Next, the treatment with pesticide poisons or heat is performed. A single room treatment takes around a working day and can cost up to €1,000, after which it is inspected and determined if another treatment is necessary.

Step 3 - Post-treatment If you kept your mattress after the treatment, it is possible to encase it in bed bug proof mattress cover that prevents any surviving bed bugs from escaping as well as new ones from getting into it. Any cracks in the walls where surviving bed bugs may be hiding should be repaired and sealed.

Step 4 - Monitoring No treatment is 100% reliable and the room must be monitored carefully after the treatment to make sure there are no surviving bed bugs. Bed bugs can reappear even some months after the treatment.

Bed bugs are more common in hotels than you may think and grow every year due to increased international travel and increased resistance to pesticides. Many hoteliers do not like to talk about the topic or past issues because they fear that it may hurt their reputation. This is because of the misconception and misunderstanding of where bed bugs come from, but even the cleanest hotels can get them.

Based on a study by pest specialist Orkin (see the end of this guide for all sources), 90% of hotels in the US have treated for bed bugs at some point. According to online bed bug reports sites, the number of reports in cities such as New York grew by 44% between 2014 and 2015.

Currently, there is no way to protect your hotel except detecting bed bugs as early as possible. If you rely on manual inspections, you can spot them visually before a large infestation has developed and easily treat the room. Manual inspections can be performed by your hotel staff or alternatively by an outsourced pest controller. Alternatively, you can use monitoring systems that help with early detection.

Based on the insights of how bed bugs behave, lab research and various experiments in real environments, we have developed the first autonomous system which attracts, traps and detects bed bugs and is designed specifically for hotel environments.

Imagine that you were able to monitor all your hotel rooms 24/7 without any manual inspections, like a smart alarm for bed bugs. That’s Valpas.

By studying how bed bugs move in a room and the needs of hoteliers, we developed a bed bug pitfall trap that is completely hidden inside bed legs. It has no pesticides and uses the human itself as the lure. This means it’s environmentally friendly, safe to use for humans and completely maintenance-free.

If as little as a single bed bug is introduced in the hotel room, it will be captured within hours when it moves towards the sleeping person. Normally, it takes at least two weeks to notice. At the same time, you will receive a private email notification and are able to check the room before any guest is affected and an infestation develops.

To check a room efficiently for bed bugs, you need to know how they move and where they hide in a room. Bed bugs are typically introduced to a room with travelers’ luggage. Once in a room, bed bugs go and hide in a dark and safe place such as under the bed or behind curtains.

At night, when a human is sleeping in the room, the bed bugs sense the exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) and start to move around searching for the food source. The most common route is by climbing the bed legs to get from the floor into the bed.

After the bed bugs have bitten the sleeping humans, they go back to hide again. They either stay somewhere on the bed, in furniture or in cracks around the room.

For this reason, the traditional way to check a room takes at least 15 minutes per room and should ideally be performed every 2 weeks. Many hotels perform room checks only once per a few months or even just once a year, which offers some protection but can leave infestations unnoticed for a long time giving it time to spread and become uncontrollable.