Traveling Without Getting Stung By Bed Bugs

Categories: Bed Bugs

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This holiday season, there may be more to worry about when checking off your Christmas list then packing, wrapping and reservations. Suitcases, gift packages, car rentals and hotel rooms can all be sources of bed bugs – those sometimes hard-to-detect bugs that made headlines last year across the world when what experts called at one point, a preventable outbreak, seemed all of a sudden unstoppable.

Bed bugs, which the Center for Disease Control defines as small, flat, parasitic insects that feed on the blood of people and animals while they sleep, and most people describe as just plain icky, started showing up, it seemed, everywhere in 2010 causing, in some instances, panic among hotel guests and travelers who feared for their skin every time they checked in. Though news reports on the subject appear to have died down a bit since then, the problem has not gone away.

The 2011 Bugs Without Borders Survey, conducted by the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), reports that 80 percent of member respondents say infestations are increasing across the country and that nearly all professional pest management companies have received bed bug calls within the last year.

A lot of people will be traveling during the holidays and that can lead to an encounter with pests that like to join you. Polk County Health Department spokesperson Sarah Boese says bed bugs are not something you want to be a part of your holiday memories.

“Bed bugs continue to be a problem throughout communities across the country and the world, and we want to remind people know as they’re traveling to be extra diligent to avoid bringing bed bugs home with them,” Boese says, “because bed bugs really are excellent hitchhikers. They like to stow away in suitcases or on clothing and then come home, where they can develop into an infestation.”

Contrary to popular belief, you aren’t necessarily safe just because you are staying with someone you know. She says you should be aware of bedbugs whether you are staying in another person’s home or a motel. When you enter the room you are sleeping in Boese suggests you pull the sheets up and look along the cracks of the mattress for bugs, empty skin shells or little black spots on the cracks of the mattress — and also check out the bedside table.

Read more about Bed bugs are a concern when you travel at: RadioIowa.com

Reports have attributed the outbreak to increased international travel, policies that banned some pesticides and limited knowledge, among other things. Travel almost certainly has something to do with it. The CDC says bed bugs are experts at hiding in luggage, folded clothes and bedding. People then can carry bed bugs without even knowing – to hotel rooms, where the next guest can pick up the bugs and carry them on and so on and so on.

In fact, the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA) said the increase in bed bugs has had “a minimal impact on the vast majority of hotels.” AH&LA urges consumers to remember that bed bugs are brought in by guests and that hotels are not to blame.
The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has set guidelines for hotels, including the recommendation that they hire a licensed pest control company to regularly inspect the premises.

Often, though, a hotel doesn’t know there’s a problem until a guest comes down to the front desk pointing to a bite on their ankle – if even then. Experts recommend when traveling this holiday season, to keep your cool and do your best to keep the bed bugs away by examining mattresses, headboards and other easy hiding places as soon as you arrive in a hotel room, keeping your suitcase on a table instead of the floor, and unpacking your dirty clothes while still in the garage into a trash bag and directly to the washing machine.