NEW YORK, March 1 — The worst hotel experiences can be caused by an insect smaller than a fingernail clipping.
Take the New Jersey physician who was working in a New York hotel room during a business trip in January when he noticed a bug on his arm. An inspection turned up about 30 more in the room, he said. The doctor had discovered the scourge of the hotel: Bedbugs.
“It turned me into a complete paranoid hotel dweller,” said the physician, who travels nearly weekly for work and did not want to be named because of the stigma attached to the insect. “I wake up in the night thinking every little itch is a bedbug.”
The tiny, biting bugs are causing headaches for hotel owners who not only have to figure out how to get rid of them, but also now have to respond to online accusations of bedbug infestations.
In an age of online reviews and social media, what was a quietly simmering issue has become a potentially toxic problem for hotels.
After Kyrie Irving, the star point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, complained about bedbugs at an Oklahoma City hotel in February, Twitter exploded with messages of disgust. Hilton responded with a public apology to Irving.
In addition to complaining about bedbugs on Twitter and sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia, travellers use more specific sites like the Bedbug Registry (which notes it was founded by a computer programmer in 2006 “as a way of getting vengeance against bedbugs after a traumatic experience in a San Francisco hotel”).
Those complaints may or may not be accurate. Two-thirds of travellers surveyed by the University of Kentucky last year couldn’t identify a bedbug.
Correct or not, those complaints have high stakes for hotels. A University of Kentucky survey of nearly 2,100 travellers in the United States found that a single recent review that mentions bedbugs lowers hotel room values by US$38 (RM159) for business travellers and US$23 for leisure travellers.
“It’s kind of a wake-up call to the hotels,” said Michael Potter, a University of Kentucky entomology professor and a co-author of the bedbug report. “There really is a big impact on purchasing decisions.”
Many travellers even note a lack of bedbugs in their reviews. One person titled a November TripAdvisor review of the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square “A room in NY without bedbugs!”
Even when hotels figure out how to kill off an infestation, owners must remain vigilant.
“You’ve got people coming from all over the world and they bring in these bugs,” said Bob Ernstoff, who owns the Mayfair New York hotel near Times Square. “It’s a very tough topic. You can’t stop people from travelling.”
Several hotel chains referred calls to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, which provides members with information on how to deal with bedbug infestations. Many hotels have developed response plans to manage the pests quickly, said Rosanna Maietta, an association spokeswoman.
“Certainly incidents like bedbugs are things we take seriously,” she said.
There is no national data on bedbug complaints at hotels, but exterminators around the country report a growing problem In Houston, Phoenix and St Louis, for example, exterminators have reported recent increases in bedbug infestations, many of them in hotels.
And nearly two-thirds of exterminators in the United States polled by the University of Kentucky and the National Pest Management Association last year said bedbug complaints were increasing.
“We went from two to three bedbug jobs a week two years ago to 15 to 20 a week now,” said Calvin Thigpen, an owner of the exterminator Bugs-Or-Us, which is based in Houston.
About one-third of those calls, he said, are from hotels. Too many hotels, Thigpen said, try to get rid of the bugs on their own by throwing away furniture and linens or by spraying ineffective chemicals. The insects just retreat into the walls and soon return, he said.
“It’s like a merry-go-round,” he said. “It just keeps cycling.”
When hotels do call in professionals for help, it is often a covert operation.
Exterminators arrive in unmarked vans, wearing jumpsuits and carrying equipment without company logos. When asked by hotel guests about their presence, they say they are there to fix water damage.
“Discretion is probably one of the most important things,” said Timothy Wong, technical director for M&M Pest Control, based in New York, where hotel calls have increased steadily over the last three years.
Bedbug-sniffing dogs, like the ones used by M&M, are being used more often in hotels, as are preventive measures near hotel beds and bedbug monitors in the rooms, often behind headboards where the insects congregate.
There are measures travellers can take, too.
Experts suggest that travellers check hotel beds thoroughly before sleeping and that they keep luggage in the bathtub to prevent the bugs from coming home with them. And storing luggage in plastic bags between trips can prevent travellers with home infestations from bringing bedbugs with them to a hotel.
When bedbugs are spotted in a room, it is important for hotels to respond quickly and sympathetically, experts say. Denying the problem can generate negative online reviews.
“A good hotel would never rent a room with bedbugs to a new customer,” said Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, an entomologist in New York who works with Cornell University’s pest-management programme.
She recalled a recent trip to upstate New York where bedbugs forced her to change rooms twice at the same hotel. “If someone complains about a bedbug in the room, the hotel should jump right on that,” she said.
Gangloff-Kaufmann and others say hotels need to do a better job training housekeeping staffs to identify and prevent bedbugs. And staff members should play a part, said Thigpen by moving the beds from the wall when cleaning.
In some cases, though, a bedbug encounter leads hotel guests themselves to become more fastidious travellers. Amy Lodovico, a sales manager for a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning manufacturer who lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has started inspecting hotel rooms thoroughly on business trips since a bedbug discovery in a New York hotel in 2013.
“There are some compulsive habits I have now, “Lodovico said. “I pull up the mattress and use a washcloth to wipe off the bed.” — The New York Times
