Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Spread
If you let the bed bugs bite, it’s already too late. Hotels are one of the top ways they spread, which makes prevention crucial.
Adult Bed Bug (Image Generated by ChatGPT)
Bed bugs are tiny pests about the size of an apple seed. They don’t spread disease, but they’re difficult to treat. They feed on blood while human hosts sleep, and they remain hidden until it’s too late.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers comprehensive information about bed bugs, including:
Characteristics, including appearance and life cycle
How to prevent infestation in your home
Protecting yourself in public places
Treatment options
My Bed Bug Nightmare
Bed bugs do not discriminate. They don’t care if you are rich or poor, clean, or dirty.
Bed bug prevention is key for me because I had them years ago, and I’m a very clean person. But I live in an apartment, and they travel and infest through shared walls. All bed bugs care about is having warmth, blood, and carbon dioxide, and we all have those.
(At that time, I was rarely traveling, so hotel stays were not the likely culprit.)
While people have different reactions to bed bug bites, I literally get eaten alive. This experience was so bad I’m itching as I write this.
It took me a few weeks of enduring bites all over my body before I saw the first one and knew for sure. I wrongly thought they might have been fleas, even through my dog at the time wasn’t itching and I was on time with her flea preventive every month. They only come out when human hosts are in deep sleep, so by the time I saw the first one, they had been there for weeks.
My heart sank when I saw a round bug crawling on my pillow.
Since I rent an apartment, I had to abide by the bed bug addendum common in leases where I live. Failure to abide by the terms of a bed bug addendum is a lease violation. This required me to:
Report any infestations to the leasing office (which I promptly did)
Treat my apartment at my own expense using a contractor and treatment method chosen by the leasing office (not me)
Prepare my apartment for treatment according to instructions provided by pest control
The pest control company used heat to treat my apartment. Heat is the best method for ensuring you kill at all life cycle stages (not to mention save your furniture and clothes).
Preparing for heat treatment is a very time-consuming process. A week before Christmas, I spent days identifying anything that could explode or be damaged by four hours of exposure to 130-degree heat, then packed it onto my balcony.
I also had to take down my blinds and arrange to kennel my dog while the pest control company had full access to my apartment for almost an entire day. And yes, they went through everything I put outside to make sure nothing needed to come back in. Given that this is such a big production, everyone was able to witness the spectacle.
It cost me almost $2,000 and days of cleanup, but I was finally I was bed bug free. And while that is a lot of money, it is a bargain compared to replacing mattresses and furniture.
I would rather be infested floor-to-ceiling with roaches than ever go through this experience again.
My Bed Bug Prevention Protocol While Traveling
Now that I have given you my bed bug horror story, here is what I do to prevent another infestation and make sure I do not bring this scourge into the homes of the friends and family I visit.
I have a personal prevention protocol that mirrors best practices. Even though most hotels have robust bed bug prevention protocols, even the best cannot completely prevent an infestation, so we as travelers must provide another level of vigilance.
Florida State University provides Let’s Beat the Bug (PDF) hotel bed bug inspection instructions you can save or print for your next trip.
The first thing I do when I enter a hotel room is inspect the bed and furniture for adult bed bugs to decide if I’ll even stay. I unmake the bed and get all the way down to the mattress to look for signs of adults, including dark marks made by their excrement.
Even if a room passes this test, I always assume that the pearl-white eggs are stuck to fabric or bedsheets. They are hard to see since hotel sheets are almost always white. And if you lay in the bed or sit on furniture with eggs, they will transfer to your clothing. This is how they spread.
Since I have cloth luggage, I never put it on a hotel bed. I only place my luggage on smooth surfaces that prevent bed bug transfer and transport.
I only wear clothing that can be washed in hot water and put into the dryer. By doing this, you can kill bed bugs in all life cycle stages. All dirty clothing is sealed in a plastic bag until I can wash and dry them at my next destination. When I arrive, the very first thing I do is put the clothes directly into the washing machine straight from the bag. I DO NOT put them in my dirty clothes hamper or allow the bag to sit.
(Clothing that is not washable in hot water goes into a separate plastic bag.)
Has it worked? While some of my travel companions think I’m nuts, I remain in the same apartment years later after years of traveling and have not had another infestation. And I don’t wish for you to have one, either.