In recent times there has been a prevalence of bed bug outbreaks in hotels most especially in the Manhattan district of New York, but this should not stop you from travelling or indeed enjoying hotel accommodation. Hotels with bed bugs can be avoided and preventative measures can be taken to ensure you do not take any of the pesky bugs home with you.
Hotels with bed bugs can be easily avoided by putting into action just a few key points. The first of these should be visiting the online bed bug registry. This registry will allow you to see where the latest outbreaks have been and just what has been done to control the situation.
Hotels with bed bugs have to be the biggest worry for travellers to New York today, and with some research you can avoid the risk of an infestation. Not only do you need to known which hotels have had recent outbreaks by consulting the registry, but more importantly you need to know which hotels have been declared bed bug free.
If you wish to avoid hotels with bed bugs then you could choose accommodation where there is a full time on site inspector. Many hotels have employed these inspectors as full time members of their staff in a bid to keep their rooms bug free.
Also, check the hotel of your choice to see that all its hygiene and pest control certificates are up to date. Choosing a hotel that is not on the listings for outbreaks is simply not satisfactory; not being on the list of hotels with bed bugs could simply mean that the hotel has not been inspected.
Next, when you wish to avoid hotel with bed bugs, you need to know how to detect these pests in any hotel room. Just because a room has been declared bed bug free does not give you one hundred percent certainty that you are not in a hotel with bed bugs, so a quick check of the mattress and bedding will keep your mind at rest.
When you are taking all the necessary precautions to miss out on hotels with bed bugs, then you need to conduct your own search. Bed bugs will leave brown blood specks on linen and mattresses as well as dead bugs, skin and larvae. Whilst you conduct your inspection, leave your luggage firmly closed and outside the room; it only takes one bug to jump on board for you to take an infestation home with you.
Hotel rooms with bed bugs will not only have bugs on the linen and mattresses, and severely infested rooms may even have a curious sweet smell to them. The pesky bugs will hide in all crevices, soft furnishings and where the skirting meets the wall, and they will run away when light is shone on them. Once hotel rooms with bed bugs are truly infested, all the furnishings have to be steamed in order to kill all traces.
If you discover on your return home that you have indeed stayed in one of many hotels with bed bugs, there are some steps to take to ensure that you do not transfer the bugs to your own home. If you believe that the infestation is isolated to just your luggage, then carefully put the contents of your cases in air tight plastic bags and leave for a couple of weeks before reopening. This is a fool proof way of killing off the pests as they will simply run out of oxygen in the air to breathe.