How to Not Bring Home Bedbugs From Hotel Stays

"Good night. Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!" This old saying from long ago is appropriate today. Hotels and motels across the United States are infested with bedbugs, small insects that drink the blood of unwary guests. New York City hotels are especially overrun by the biting insects that live in bedding, upholstered furniture and rugs. Bedbugs are in the habit of hitching a ride on people or articles of clothing and moving from place to place. To avoid bringing bedbugs home with you after a hotel stay, follow some precautions.

Things You'll Need

• Flashlight
• Plastic bags

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Instructions

• 1

  Check the Bedbug Registry to see if the hotel where you are planning to stay has bedbugs. The registry is a free, public database of user-submitted bedbug reports from across North America (see Resources for a link). Even posh luxury hotels can have bedbugs. If your intended destination is listed in the registry, choose another hotel that is free of the bloodsucking insects. This is your best protection against picking up bedbugs in a hotel and taking them home with you. However, if you fail to take the precaution of finding a bedbug-free establishment, there are other ways to protect yourself.

• 2

  This chair could be hiding bedbugs.

  Leave your luggage in the car. After obtaining the keys, carefully search the room using a flashlight. Pull back the sheets to see if any bugs are hiding in the seams of the mattress. Look for fecal stains on the sheets caused by bedbugs. Search for egg cases, blood stains and material that bedbugs shed. Examine the bed frame and any pictures on the wall behind the bed. Take a good look at the upholstered furniture and the carpet near the bed.

• 3

  Go at once to the front desk of the hotel to complain if you find bedbugs in your room. Insist on getting another room, one that is not adjoining, above or below the infested room. Bedbugs can crawl though vents and small cracks and spread quickly from one room to another. Even if you find a room where bedbugs aren't visible, you're still not necessarily safe from them and there is always the possibility that they are indeed there.

• 4

  You might get infested if you place your luggage on the bed.

  Put your suitcase on a luggage rack, preferably a metal one. Bedbugs can live in cracks in wood. You can also put each leg of the luggage rack in a glass of water so bedbugs cannot travel up the legs to your suitcase. Bedbugs cannot fly. Watch where you put your clothes. Don't lay them on the furniture, the bed or the carpet. Keep them as much as possible in plastic bags or in your zipped-up suitcase.

• 5

  Wash your clothes in hot water when you return home. Water that is 115 degrees Fahrenheit kills bedbugs in about seven minutes. If you are concerned that bedbugs are lurking in your luggage, spray it with malathion.