NOTICE - READ before booking hotels

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Proud Parent
Well, 'tis meet season and many of us are booking/have booked hotels for the season. So, I thought that I'd post something that I thought you all might find very helpful in preventing those unwanted hotel residents from coming home with you and wreaking havoc on your stays.

YEP - TALKING ABOUT BEDBUGS!!!! :eek::eek::eek: Gross topic, but felt that we all could use a reminder to watch out for them and what to do.

Before booking a hotel, check out this site to see if the hotel that you have in mind has had any reports of bedbugs.Bed Bug Registry - Check Apartments and Hotels Across North America. I check it before booking, and also closer to the actual day that we'll be checking in to make sure that there have been no new reports. Also check out the 'Resource' page for helpful tips.

Upon Checking in, make sure that you inspect your room. This site has some great tips on what to look for..

How to check your hotel room ---- How to inspect your hotel room for bed bugs « Bug Girl’s Blog ---- including how to safeguard your luggage (tip 1. keep it on a metal luggage rack away from the walls) and what to look for in the morning before checking out.

What the critters look like ----- bed bugs photos, eggs, cast skins, stains; bed bug bites

And what to do if it's too late and they've already invited themselves back to your house.

Hope everyone's meet season is critter free!!!!
 
Thank you sooo much for this info! I am booking for the world class meet in Va and did come across one review about a hotel with bed bugs but that was it. This will help me alot more in researching the hotels I've chosen.
 
BUT, just remember that Bed Bugs travel on people, you can get them in school, at work, in a movie theatre and even in a hospital. They live for a huge amount of time without feeding. Hotels do not breed them and they do not plant them, travellers do. So you are just as likely to encounter them on a train as you are in a hotel.

The Bed Bug registry is owned by an extermination company and many of their reviews are dubious, as in planted by people for not so honest reasons. If a hotel is registered as having bed bugs on Jan 10th 2010, it probably didn't have them by the next day. Hotels deal with this regularly and they will do anything to get rid of them. However there are hotels that do not care, these tend to be the older, run down and cheap hotels. Do not use bed bug registry as your method of finding a bed bug free hotel, they do not ever revisit the posts and they are not vetted for honesty.

Stick with good brand name hotels that are well reviewed on Tripadvisor and do look for the little critters. One review with bed bugs in it should not prevent you from staying, that would just be silly. However repeated reports of bed bugs are a very good reason to stay far, far away.

My son got an infestation of them last summer, probably picked up the little hitch hikers in the movie theatre. His GF was bitten a lot, but he did not have a mark on him. One visit from the exterminator and a whole lot of laundry and dry cleaning, and they were gone.

I always check for bed bugs in hotel rooms, I have even trained the kids to do it. But planes, trains and movie theatres and even the NYC NIke store has been infested, you just cannot avoid those things.
 
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Bog is correct. Bed Bugs can be anywhere, not just at hotels, and not just ones that have a complaint. And yes, do not let 1 report dissuade you from booking a hotel (they are suspect if it's only 1 anonymous report). I use the registry to check for multiple reports and also check the comments section about the reports. I find the website about HOW to check for bedbugs and how to prevent them/get rid of them very helpful! I never knew how to check for them before coming across this site.

BTW - once reported, the hotel stays on the bedbug registry site as having had a report for 1yr., so check how long ago that report was issued. A report of bugs 11months ago doesn't concern me nearly as much as one reported last week, or numerous reports every few weeks, etc. I do know that our State's Health Inspectors use this site to help them determine hotel stays when they are travelling for personal trips. So, while the site isn't perfect....it's at least a tool. Just look at is a tool for research and pay attention to the hotels with multiple complaints.

It's always best to check any hotel you check into before settling into it. No matter how reputable or not the chain is. This is thread is just a means to help everyone know what to look for and stay bug-free. :)
 

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