NATIONAL REPORT—What does hotel bed bug prevention mean, anyway? Stopping the introduction of a bed bug into your hotel is impossible. There are just so many ways to enter…with guests, deliveries, and service staff. And, given their relatively small size, identification is difficult.
“Of course you can’t prevent an introduction,” said Joseph Latino, president of Allergy Technologies, “But by being proactive, you absolutely can significantly reduce the possibility of a guest encountering bed bugs, and by doing so realize huge operational, financial and reputational benefits.”
Bed bug prevention is about ensuring the proverbial snowball (the introduction of a few bed bugs) doesn’t become an avalanche (full-blown infestation) that crushes your monthly or quarterly revenue. And the most proven way to do that is with an active mattress liner.
“If a single bed bug is introduced into a hotel room, it will quickly seek out a blood meal in the most likely place…the bed,” said Latino. Unaddressed, a single, pregnant female can turn into over 30,000 bed bugs in 10 weeks. “If that room is equipped with an active mattress liner, the bed bug will come into contact with it, and will almost immediately no longer be able to feed or lay eggs; it will die, and the risk of an infestation has been averted.”
This means not closing down an entire block of rooms, relocating multiple parties, discarding lots and lots of soft goods, and dealing with a multitude of negative social media posts and potential lawsuits.
“The biggest mistake hotels make is underestimating the true cost of bed bugs infestations and repeatedly treating the problem, instead of preventing it,” Latino concluded.
Stay tuned over the next seven weeks as Latino and the Allergy Technologies team tackle the benefits of bed bug prevention in more detail.