Pest Control for Hotels

New York City is a massive metropolis filled with everything that you can think of. You can find amazing museums, historic buildings, exclusive hotels and restaurants and all things posh, chic and commercial. Hotels in New York are close together and many of the most popular, richest and chicest people have a whole wing of exclusive hotels dedicated for them. With such a diverse mixture of people in social and economic status, it is very easy to assume that hotels can have issues with pest control every now and then.

Surely there will be some isolated cases of rats or cockroaches. However, there is a great deal when it comes to one particular type of bug: bed bugs. Bed bugs are horror stories for hotel clients. We go to hotels thinking that we will be able to relax in a decent, highly stylized room that can sometimes be overpriced. We did not pay for any bed bugs in our bill. Bed bugs have made a big come back in the middle of the 90s and today there is a massive infestation in New York. According to a study by Terminex, New York has one of the highest bed bug infestation records in the United States. Think about it. People travel in New York, go to hotels, and leave the day after only to be used by a new client the following day.

Bed bugs are incredible hitchhikers and they can survive inside and outside your luggage. Once they have settled on a bedroom, there is a great chance that later, when you are sleeping, bed bugs are bound to get you. These critters will detect concentration of carbon dioxide that we naturally emit when we exhale. When they detect the CO2, normally, they will go to our beds where we are sleeping. They will pierce our skin, spread an anesthetic and then suck your blood, feasting on you for 15 minutes. Rashes, itching and other skin conditions can be experienced initially. Aside from that, bed bugs can also bring a variety of other viruses that could make you and your family sick.

The problem is that be it a cheap motel or a 5 star hotel, bed bugs can get in and you never know that it is there. They hide very well and they are extremely resilient. There are news articles in popular 5-star hotels in New York that have isolated bed bug cases. The problem is that there is no such thing as isolated cases in hotels. It gives the hotel a bad reputation. However, it’s hard to blame the cleaning department as it is difficult to say exactly where the bed bugs came from. One minute there are no bed bugs, and the next minute there are a couple of bed bugs. Hotels do not change mattresses all that often, they just change the sheets.

The bed bugs hide on the mattress areas, on the corners of your bed frame, on the head board of the bed, on the night stands. Sometimes, the visitors to the hotel are the carriers of the bed bugs. If you travel a lot, there is a chance that a bed bug or two could hitchhike on your luggage. When you reach your next destination, the bed bugs will follow you and immerse themselves in their new home. Another person enters the hotel room, they used the bed, and the bed bugs went to their luggage, went to New York and then slept on another bed.

International travel and hotels are hot spots for bed bugs if not addressed well. Since people usually don’t know that there are bed bugs on their hand carries or on the luggage bin of the plane, possibilities are endless. This is not an exaggeration. International and domestic travels have become critical vehicles for the spread of the massive population of bed bugs. For a couple of months, bed bugs can reproduce by the hundreds up to thousands of new larvae. It is not a nice scene. It is a really nasty experience to see these bed bugs lurking on the bed and the sofa.

Hotels of course know that these cases are very possible. They know that the existences of bed bugs are bad for their reputation and losing customers because of bed bugs is a possibility. That is why they always do routine checkups. The cleaning department is a very big department for massive hotels. They are trained to ensure that the beds are clean and the place is safe to sleep in. They also get help from pest control specialists. Part of the hotels’ investment for comfort is the investment for pest control.

Sometimes the naked eye cannot detect the bed bugs. And if you have hundreds of rooms in your hotel, it is a massive job to handle all at once. Every now and then pest control experts work their way in areas with reports of bed bugs. The areas adjacent to these rooms are also checked. This is necessary since the room is abandoned, the pests can lurk and find other sources of food.

Bed bug infestation in hotels are reported on the news and you think to yourself, if big hotels can have bed bugs, what are the chances of a regular home getting these pests? That is a big question. However, hotel professionals do their best to make sure that what they offer in their business is clean and pest free. Heavy infestation is very rare in popular hotels because they work consistently to follow sanitation rules for hotels and restaurants by law. High class hotels cannot slack off when it comes to bed bugs. High profile celebrities, politicians and socialites as well as business people sleep in their rooms and if they get any bed bugs, the hotel easily gets very bad response from the media and fellow hotel owners.

Bed bug cases in New York are mostly on highrise apartments and living spaces where people tend to slack off. Hotels however are not immune to these infestations. That is why for those hotel owners, hearing stories of clients itching when they wake up and finding blood stains on their mattress requires very quick response. You cannot slack off if something like that happens. Bed bugs, as said earlier can multiply so fast they can spread across the room and adjacent rooms within days or weeks.

If you are a customer, a bed bug infested hotel is not attractive at all. You expect the highest level of service for yourself and then at night you realize that there is a micro hotel in your own bed with bed bugs dining on your blood before settling to their massive bed. If you experience anything like that, it would be best to call the staff and the manager as soon as possible. Informing them about a possible infestation can help mitigate the problem as soon as possible. Being a cooperative hotel guest will be very helpful for the hotel. They can change your hotel room so that you can comfortably sleep.

Being bitten by bed bugs is just scary, just like the idea of those kids having tapeworms or your pets having parasites on their fur. It is like feeling that you are not clean enough and you need to take another long shower. The trauma after being bitten by bed bugs is always present. You feel that something is biting you even if there are no more bed bugs in your area.

There is a number of amazing pest control specialists that handle infestations for private and commercial areas. The issue with these places is that you cannot vacate everyone when an infestation on one room happens. Routine checkups are done in hotels to ensure that no bed bugs are present in the rooms. Bed bug issues are never taken lightly in the hotel industry. Hotels even have their own inspectors checking the conditions of the hotel. They also record cases of bed bugs in their hotels and they work hard to make their rooms essentially bed bug free. It is possible to find a hotel that is bed bug free. The problem is that the people entering the hotel may be carrying the bugs. So whatever path you choose, there is always the fear or having bed bugs in one of the rooms.

Hotels in any class and size all need to work hard to mitigate bed bug cases in their respective hotels. Managing a hotel is very difficult and so disciplining the crew and doing routine checkups is of very critical importance. Handling a bed bug infestation lightly can lead to bigger problems. It costs more and of course, you can lose your job if you do not do your job well in ensuring that bed bugs are out of the hotel. The dangers of bed bugs, the horror stories and the trauma they can cause are present and very real. We cannot help it but there are ways to minimize the condition and do our best in order to at least have very minimum reports of bed bugs in hotels.

Hotels With Bed Bug Infestations

We found this article By Dave Franzman, a reporter for KCRG News that states, that a family from Cedar Rapids, Iowa were bit by bed bugs In a Grinnell Motel. They said that they took pictures and a video of the bed bugs. They captured pictures of the bugs all over the room from the bed to the headboard to even the walls. The family immediately left the Motel, of course. They said they were even scared to go home just so they don’t bring these nasty little bugs in to their home.

So they said that they stopped at a Laundromat and put their clothes in a dryer to rid them of any existing bed bugs. The family is apparently still fighting to get their refund back for the rooms and the cost of a substitute motel. The owner of Grinnell Motel said that when workers went in their rooms that they didn’t find any bed bugs. But they did end up calling a professional pest control company to treat the room anyways.

Read more http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Family-Discovers-Bed-Bug-Infestation-at-Grinnell-Hotel-105489123.html

Another article we found about the famous and historical Waldorf-Astoria with reports of bed bugs. This article was written by Fran Golden for AOL Travel.

“The Waldorf-Astoria is one of the best-known hotels in the world. Apparently bed bugs are familiar with the luxury property too, at least according to a Florida woman. The woman, who is from Coral Gables and asked not to be named, tells the New York Post she had welts and rashes after a stay at the fancy hotel on Sept. 25. The bed bugs attacked her in a $330 per night room, she tells the newspaper. “We were grossed out,” says the woman, who works for an investment bank and was traveling with her mother, sister and boyfriend. When she complained to hotel management,

she says she was moved to a room in the hotel’s swank Towers, that goes for more than $700. And she got a free night. But first, she says, hotel workers grilled her and asked her to display her bites. “It felt like you were getting blamed for the fact there was a bedbug in your bed,” she says. The woman says she had to take anti-inflammatory pills for a week because of the bites. For its part, the hotel denies there were bed bugs in the woman’s room. “No bedbugs or trace of bedbugs was found in the room in contention,” Robert Allegrini, a spokesman for Hilton Worldwide, which runs the Waldorf, tells the newspaper.

The hotel does admit it gave the woman an upgrade. And asked whether bedbugs have ever been found in the Waldorf, the newspaper says Allegrini said he didn’t know. Bed bug infestations have been reported in New York recently at Bloomingdales and the offices of Elle magazine, among other places.”

http://news.travel.aol.com/2010/10/07/guest-says-bed-bugs-attacked-her-at-waldorf-astoria-hotel/

For more info please Call Beyond Pest Control At (718)777-2345 Or check us out at https://www.nypestpro.com

Beyond Pest Control.

Our pest control specialists service all NYC boroughs, including Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island (both Nassau & Suffolk counties), Staten Island and even both Westchester & Rockland counties.