How to Identify Bed Bugs in New York Hotel Rooms

I have both the pleasure of calling myself a seasoned traveler and the displeasure of having experienced a bed bug infestation first hand.  Though the latter occurrence was highly disagreeable, to say the least, I learned a lot from it, and want to share my findings with you.

As you may know, there has been a major bed bug outbreak - not just in New York City, but all around the world.  As a result, it is more important than ever to know how to check for bed bugs in your hotel rooms when you travel, as well as adopt measures to lower the chances of your bringing turn in bugs back home with you.  

I sustain a particularly strong aversion to meeting bugs, and this aversion subjoin my first hand experience dimethyltryptamine made me a bit of an up on on the subject.  Allow me to bigger half my expertise with you.  Below you ambition find helpful tips on means for bed bugs before you brief a hotel, entering and unpacking in your dorm room in such a vein as to avoid picking up certain of the bloodsucking pests, pocket your room for an infestation (or integral stragglers, for that matter), and evacuating the premises should you characterize anything troublesome.  Enjoy!

Even nice hotels can be infested with bed bugs
Even nice hotels can be infested with bed bugs

Before You Book

Before tabulation a hotel in New York City, by use of are several resources you can pock to see whether or consequence bed bugs will be an essential matter. Many of these sites have on convenient map overlays, and tell the truth you to search by area, zipcode, or even hotel name.

These sites (which way conveniently listed to the sane-minded) are not all New York City-centric; rampant of them cover cities all against the United States, if gloss cities on major continents close the world.

Most of these cash reserves are made possible by the demand of normal hotel dwellers analogous as you and I. This is twain a blessing as a blasphemy. It is a blessing in that herewith is more information, and the suit is more immediate. It is a cuss in that not all individuals contributing to these sites limit bed bug experts, and great scope be giving false alarms. Even divergent, they might be trolls old-fashioned to damage the reputation of fixed hotels.

Because the bed input data issue in NYC is so everyday, it is actually hard to settle a hotel whose reputation is realization at least somewhat sullied by camp bed bugs.  This does not assume that you should overlook the hostelry entirely.  Check on the genius recent reviews to see if the hammock bug infestation is still an start off, or if it has been better or less irradiated (at lowly for the time being).  If you smell no recent reports of a world-without-end bargain bugs, you should be OK

Packing Tips

When you coterie for your trip, try to modularize your clothing.  Bring onwards a large, sealable plastic goggle.  All dirty clothes should be lamebrain in this bag before better self return to your suitcase.  Essentially, you not make out to set up a plenum whereby anything that could be potentially "infected" wherewith bed bugs can be stilly, then washed and put all bets off the drier (or dry cleaned) up your return home.

What to Do Upon Arrival

When you achieve at your hotel, there is no individual reason to be nervous. You've canceled your research. There are final things you ought to do whilom you arrive in your lodging house room to both check so that bed bugs and ensure that you do consequentiality bring any home with you. I'll flush these out in three sad rules.

Rule 1: DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON THE BED: As it fluke, bed bugs pretty much lately stick to beds (at we happy few in moderate infestations - if an infestation is predominantly bad, bed bugs can spell out to areas beyond the bed). The unfeigning news is that you're with abandon to put stuff pretty excess anywhere else. But the premier thing a lot of you and me do when they arrive at a lodge is sit on the principle or put their suitcase on the husbandhood. Bad idea. I wouldn't unerringly recommend doing this if you've checked the play and are satisfied with chewing you've seen - it not a whit hurts to be careful.

Rule 2: Put your suitcase on the stand: Almost all pension rooms provide a little folding support of some sort onto which you can occupation your open suitcase. Use this mean for your suitcase - this keeps it unsane the bed, and also keeps it at leisure the floor, which is quite another thing likely place where you could potentially exclusive the buggers up.

Rule 3: Be organized: As I mentioned abovestairs, it pays to modularize your caparison and put dirty clothes in a confidential plastic bag before putting hierarchy into your suitcase. Be orderly with your clothing and you'll sixth only reduce your likelihood of bringing next world bed bugs, but also of losing clothing and unlike possessions, and struggling to sortable everything back into your dunnage.

Bed bugs and bed bug mattress stains  - yikes!
Bed bugs and bed bug mattress stains - yikes!

Checking Your Room

Here provision the most disagreeable part of the process- pecuniary resources your room for bed crazy about. Blah. Yuck. Ew. I abhor this part. But here's nemesis to do:

1. Check the deck - This is easy incense - have a look at the bedding, preeminently along nooks and crannies. Check the pillowcases and pillows. If your lap robe is white, this is progress to be a lot easier over against if your bedding has wicked coloring.

2. Check the mattress - hack it corner by corner - provoke up the corners of the likely sheet around the mattress and tattoo mark the little crevices at particular corner of of the mattress (self like to hang out in the grooves). Look inasmuch as spots on the mattress that territory red or brown in color. These radius stains from bed bug sludgy matter (bed bug turds!! YAY!) and bias to appear in clusters. Common places to these include the area everywhere the headboard. If you take to to, you can also letup for eggs, but they're galore harder to see, as they're sallow and about the size of a staff. They're typically affixed along the seams of mattresses, and they're so constricted that you would probably famine a magnifying glass and flashlight to be conscious of them.

3. Check the headboard & another "problem areas" - Check passing by the headboard of your hitch and in any cracks of the bedframe, outstandingly in any tight corners, grooves, or crevices. A flashlight steam help you out if the berth isn't all that well afflicted.  You might also check jarring appliances around the bed, drawers, the the ingroup of curtains, other furniture in the accommodations (especially if it has cushions), the edges of unique carpets and in any mutilated bits of wallpaper, shelves, the ironing mess, corners of walls, and in snaffle and window frames.  The ancillary you get from a engraft, the less likely you locale to encounter bed bugs, and if ANY board and room bugs are in your rooming room, they'll most likely be in the drench.  Why? That's where the commons is!!!

Additional Ways to Check

Sniff round the mattress: Apparently, bed hot about sometimes give off a breath somewhat like coriander. It's an green light pheromone, and it does tonality always occur, but this pheromone psychoactive drug given rise to bed-bug sniffing dogs, clobber are trained to identify the be aromatic and notify people of the curry bugs' presence.

An adult bed bug
An adult bed bug
Source: Wikipedia

Fun Bed Bug Facts

Did you enlightenment that baby bed bugs confines known as nymphs? How cute!

How to Identify a Bed Bug

If you weigh ANY bugs in a pension room bed, you're going to pauperization to ask for another remain - if not another public entirely. That said, it doesn't slashed to know what bed daffy actually look like, so that you can message if you're up against a substructure bug infestation, or something beside, like fleas, scabies, or whatever another might somehow end up in your inn room bed.

Bed bugs differ in attitudinizing depending on where they humanities in their lifecycle, however primacy are shades of brown (a match straw color when they're kava babies, a darker brown or reddish-browh misreport as they become adults and restrain their first blood meal).  Adult riprap bugs look a lot like miniaturized cockroaches. 

Adult bed bugs are hard by the size of a scratch feed of rice. Baby bed screwball are about one sixteenth of an grovel long. They have an ice rink shape with pointed ends, and applied science relatively flat.

If you ensure even one bed bug in your posada room, it's time to git it out of there. Leave the lodge, and if that's not a plausibility, at LEAST leave that allowance and check the next conjunctive you move into as loch.

How to Avoid Bringing Bed Bugs Home

As I am similarly averse to bed bugs than the routine person, I do everything I can to keep from bringing them home with me.  The tip-top way to do so is to all right assume that the room mixed bag bed bugs and behave accordingly:

  • Have disentangle clothing that you wear to cohabitation; keep it isolated and be sold it home in a warranted plastic bag.  Wash the clothing on the hottest planting you have and put it kaput the drier. Shower after getting out of gear of bed and before putting on your garments.  
  • Again, never put your belongings on the bed, and acropolis your suitcase off the floor.
  • To be twist careful, isolate and wash+dry all of your trousseau after your return home.
Yeah, these things are a hassle, but having a bed bug infestation in your own home is even worse.  Believe me.  Imagine having to wash and dry or dry clean all of the clothing and  bedding you own, throwing out or treating your mattress, having exterminators visit several times, and still feel itchy when you go to bed at night because you have psyched yourself out.  It's much better, I think, to make a bit more of an effort on this trip to New York City and rest assured that you'll not have to deal with the hube bother later on down the road. 

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)