Bed Bug Heat Treatments for Guest Houses & B&Bs

The Situation

A large hotel that loses a room to bed bugs loses a fraction of a per cent of its capacity. A guest house with five rooms loses a fifth of the business, and in a small property the owner usually lives on site, so it is personal as well as commercial.

It is also worth saying plainly, because owners of small accommodation take it hard: bed bugs arriving is not a reflection on how the place is run. Guests arrive continually with luggage that has been somewhere else. The best-kept B&B in Buckinghamshire is exposed to exactly the same risk as the worst.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

Speed

Why One Visit Matters More at This Size

Heat is usually a single treatment, and that is the argument for it in a small property. An insecticide programme with a follow-up visit timed against the egg hatch can mean a room out of use for two or three weeks. Heat generally means a day.

Over a season, the difference in rooms sold is normally larger than the difference in treatment cost, which is the calculation worth doing rather than comparing the two quotes side by side.

Where you have a genuinely quiet midweek gap, say so — the work can often be fitted into it and cost you no bookings at all.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

Finding it early

The Four Places to Look on Changeover

Small properties have one real advantage: the same person usually services every room, every changeover, and sees them all. That is the best early-warning system there is, and it takes about thirty seconds a room.

• The mattress piping at the head end, both sides. This is where they are found more often than everywhere else combined.
• The divan base, particularly the access panel and the corner staples.
• Behind the headboard where it meets the wall — lift it rather than looking down the back.
• The joint between frame and base, and any screw holes.

You are looking for dark ink-like spotting that does not wipe off cleanly, pale shed skins, and the insects themselves. Finding spotting early is a one-room job; finding it when a guest complains rarely is.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

If a guest reports it

What to Do in the First Hour

Do not strip the room and start carrying bedding through the house. That is the single fastest way to turn one affected room into three.

What helps: take the room out of use, close the door, leave it exactly as it is, photograph anything you have found in place, and move the guest to a room that is not adjacent if you can. Bag anything the guest needs taken out, in the room. Then ring.

Resist the urge to spray something. Most shop products repel rather than kill, which scatters them into the next room and makes the treatment harder.

Short answers

Heat Treatment Questions

Accommodation and rental property

If You Manage Somewhere People Sleep

The problem is different when the bed is not yours. These set out what changes.