How To Look For Bedbugs And Avoid Them In A Hotel
Seems simple enough (how to look for bedbugs)… Be sure to do this the next time you are staying in a hotel or a motel. It’ll save you some headaches and it’ll save you from getting bedbugs in some cases.
The following instructions and ‘how-to’ video will tip you on where and how to look for bedbugs in your hotel or motel room while traveling.
The situation could potentially become your own personal ‘disaster’ in today’s modern world of travel… so here’s how to avoid it.
Traveling & Tips Looking For Bedbugs
First Put Your Luggage In The Bathtub
When entering a hotel room, the first thing most people do is throw their stuff on the bed, the luggage rack or maybe even both. When you’re traveling in this day and age, that’s a no-no, because bedbugs could be in either of those places.
Chances are there will not be bedbugs in the bathroom. It could occur, but once you put your stuff in the bathtub, it’s pretty safe. The best thing to do when you enter a room is to bring what you’re carrying into the bathtub. After you’ve done that, it’s time to start checking your room.
Check The Bed Backboard For Bedbugs- behind and all around it
The first place to check is behind the bed backboards, in the corners, along the creases of it, any place you can see on the bed backboard.
Check The Piping Of The Mattress For Bedbugs
The next place you look is along the piping of the mattress edges, looking for either the adult bedbugs, immature bedbugs or anything that looks suspicious to you. Check the piping all the way around the entire bed, along the top part and the bottom part.
Check The Mattress and Mattress Pad For Bedbugs Or Spots
The next place you look is more disgusting. You need to be looking either directly on the mattress or on a mattress pad. You take the sheet off, and what you’re looking for here is actually blood spots where the bedbugs have been feeding.
Check The Bureau And Night Tables Beside The Bed For Bedbugs
The next place you should look is the bureau . You want to look all along the inside drawers, pull them out and tip over while looking along the corners.
Bedbugs Will Be Within 20 Feet Of Their Host
Bedbugs are very secretive. In most cases, they’re within 20 feet of their host, so in most hotel rooms, you know there’s not a lot of space for them to be. Chances are they’re going to be right on the bed or in the night tables beside the bed.
Check The Luggage Rack For Bedbugs
A luggage rack is a very good place for bedbugs to hide. Because this webbing is so nice and snug, the bedbugs really like to get in underneath here. So when in a hotel room, fold up the luggage rack and look underneath the webbing. By folding it, you have plenty of give to the fabric so as to look between the webbing and the frame.
What If You Find Bedbugs?
All right, so you’ve gone into your room, you’ve checked your room and you’re happy you haven’t found any bedbugs, so you can be content and hope there are no bedbugs. But the question that remains is what if you found a bedbug? The first thing you can do if you found a bedbug is pick up your luggage, get out of the room, go to the head of the hotel and just say, ‘Please give me another room.’ Of course, you could always check out of that hotel.
Bedbugs Might Only Be In One Room…
Bedbugs are kind of strange in that they could be in your room and that might be the only room in the hotel they’re in.
Bedbugs Are Easy To Transport
But bedbugs are very spotty: They can be in a five-star hotel or a dingy hostel you may be staying in. And they’re easily transported. That’s why the whole thing about the luggage. Bedbugs have a tendency to crawl into anything that’s around to hide, and that’s why they’re transported to your house, to another hotel, to movie theaters, to train stations, you name it. That’s where they are, and they’re a serious problem…
Keychain & Luggage Flashlight
This is why it is a very good idea to always have a keychain flashlight and/or to always keep a separate flashlight in your luggage when you travel!
My Keychain flashlight:
Olight i3E Compact Keychain Flashlight
My travel luggage flashlight:
Streamlight Stylus Pro Black LED Pen Flashlight
Informational Source: University of Maine Cooperative Extension
