Bed Bugs: A Traveler's Guide

You may think that there is nothing worse than crashing out on your comfortable hotel bed after a long, exhausting flight, only to find that it is infested with bedbugs. But you would be wrong. Because although many people do not know it, bedbugs are great travelers. If it’s not bad enough that they ruin your holiday, you may find them turning up in your own bed when you return home. However, there are many steps that you can take to reduce the chances of picking them up, preventing you from becoming one of the unfortunate victims of bedbugs when returning from your travels.

Bedbug Travel Techniques

Before you even go on holiday, you should be aware of just how versatile bedbugs are. If they can find a way to travel with you, then they will. Some of their travel methods may be surprising:

Clothes – although unlikely, it is possible for bedbugs to travel from one place to another on the clothes that you are wearing.

Shoes – these provide a good hiding place, and you will not be aware of their presence until it is too late.

Luggage – this is their favorite hideout. No bag is too big or too small to double up as a bedbug vessel.

Electronic items – bedbugs will hide wherever they can, and the small cracks in radios and phones may be just what they are looking for.

Where Can They Strike?

Although bedbugs may be more common in cheaper accommodation, you should never assume that you are immune from an encounter, even in a five star hotel. Bedbugs arrive with a guest who is carrying them, so it does no matter how clean the accommodation is. However, if the accommodation is good then the staff will often deal with the problem quickly and effectively.

What to Do if You Find Bedbugs in Your Room

If you discover early on that your hotel or hostel room has bedbugs, then the advice is simple: get out. Inform the staff of the hotel, and they should be more than happy to let you switch rooms. However, it is not always easy to know that you are sharing your room with bedbugs. They are difficult to spot, and you may only know that they are present when they start biting you in the night. You should still ask for a different room, but you will have to take extra precautions to stop them hitching a ride back home with you.

Checking the Room

You should get into the habit of checking any room for bedbugs as soon as you arrive. If you can, place all of your belongings on a table or a luggage rack, where bedbugs are less likely to travel, before starting your search. Start by checking the sheets of the bed for black fecal spots or spots of blood. Then run your finger along the rim of the bed, and check the label to see if any are hiding there. Finally, look on the bedside table and in any cracks that you can find to see if there are any sleeping there. Although they are hard to see in the daytime, these checks could reveal the vital early signs to you, meaning you can get out before picking any up.

Preventative Measures

To minimize the risk of picking up any bedbugs in the first place, you should keep all of your bags locked whilst in the room, and try to put them on top of a table with smooth legs. If you suspect bedbugs, do not put your clothes in the wardrobe or in the draws, but instead keep them hanging in the main room if possible, or on top of a table with the bags. Lock away all of your smaller items in sealable plastic bags. Bedbugs can quite easily sneak into the cracks of your radio and other such items, so prevent them from getting anywhere near them.

On-the-Spot Treatments

Although treating an infestation is a serious issue, many products promote themselves as simple methods of preventing bedbugs when you are traveling. Natural biological sprays are one such solution. These products repels and kills them on contact, and can be sprayed onto the bed when you arrive, or onto your clothes whilst hanging up.

Leaving an infested room

When leaving a room in which you have discovered bedbugs, there are a few things to do to prevent taking them with you. First, have a hot shower to get rid of any that are on you, even though this is highly unlikely. Then wash all of your clothes on a hot setting, and dry them in a hot dryer, leaving the clothes for 20 minutes after they are dry to kill off all the bugs. You should then wash out your bags with hot water, and dry it in the hot dryer in the same way as your clothes. Finally, check all of your appliances for bugs, and clean the ones that can be cleaned. By taking these simple steps, the chances of spreading the bugs will be minimized.

Traveling Home

Whether you have had a bedbug problem on holiday or not, you may be surprised to learn that many bedbugs are picked up from the luggage hold on the plane. They can quite easily crawl from one person’s bag into your own, so make sure that yours are sealed tight before putting them into the hold. When you get home, do not unpack onto your bed. If a bedbug has managed to travel with you, then you will be doing it a favor. Instead, unpack onto a table and check everything to make sure that you can’t see any signs of them. If you do find any, then get your traveling gear out of the house, and wash anything that can be washed. Other items should be thoroughly cleaned, and could even be sprayed with a direct contact killer as an added precaution. All of this may seem like a lot of extra work to go through when traveling abroad, but you will save yourself a lot more time and energy if you prevent bedbugs from getting into your house in the first place.