Bed Bug Heat Treatments for Hotels

The Situation

A confirmed bed bug report in a hotel is an operational problem before it is a pest problem. A room comes out of inventory, somebody has to decide whether it is one room or a floor, and there is usually a guest who needs handling.

The reason heat suits hotels is timing. There is no insecticide residue, so once the room has cooled it goes back into service — no wipe-down, no exclusion period, no second visit before it can be sold. In most cases that is a single day out rather than a week.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

The first question

Is It One Room or Several?

The honest answer is that nobody knows until somebody looks, and the assumption that it is confined to the reported room is the one that costs hotels money.

Bed bugs travel between rooms two ways. Guests and staff carry them — on luggage, on linen trolleys, on a vacuum moved room to room. And they move themselves through the structure, along service voids and pipe runs and under skirtings, which is why the rooms that matter most are the ones either side and directly above and below.

So an inspection covers the reported room and its neighbours as a matter of course. If they are clear, that is a useful thing to know and it is written down. If they are not, you have found it before a guest did.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

Discretion

Nobody in the Lobby Needs to Know

An unmarked vehicle can be arranged in advance. Beyond that, the things that actually matter in a hotel are practical and worth specifying when you book:

• Which entrance and which lift, and at what time.
• Equipment in and out in one movement, not left in a corridor.
• Nothing discussed in front of guests or non-management staff.
• Paperwork to a named person rather than reception.

Heat treatment needs visible equipment and a power supply for a few hours, so it cannot be made invisible. It can be made to look like maintenance, which is usually what is wanted.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

Afterwards

Monitoring, and What to Tell Housekeeping

The most valuable thing a hotel can do after a treatment is not buy more treatment. It is get housekeeping looking in the right place.

Bed bugs are found on the mattress piping at the head end, in the divan base access panel, behind the headboard where it meets the wall, and in the joint between the bed frame and the base. Thirty seconds per room by somebody who knows those four spots finds things months before a guest does.

Passive monitors under bed legs in rooms that have had a problem are cheap and worth it. We can advise on where to put them and what a positive one actually looks like.

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.