Bed Bugs In A Hotel Room: The Five Minute Check Before You Unpack

Put your bags in the bathroom, not on the bed. Pull back the sheets, take a flashlight to the mattress seams and the crack behind the headboard, and look for small rust colored spots. That check takes about five minutes, and it is the part of a trip that decides whether anything follows you home to Stark County.

Bed bugs do not care how new the room is or how clean it looks. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls them great hitchhikers that move from an infested site to a new home on furniture, bedding, luggage, boxes and clothing. A suitcase is transport.

Before You Sit Down, Before You Unpack

Do this in the first few minutes, while your bags are still sealed. Ohio State University Extension's guidance for travelers is blunt about the order of operations: when possible put your bags in the bathroom or even in the bathtub when you first arrive, and do not sit down before you inspect. A hard bathroom floor or a tub is a poor place for an insect to hide and an easy place to spot one.

• Bags in the bathroom first. Not on the bed, not on the upholstered chair, not on the carpet.
• Pull the linens back at the head of the bed. Check the mattress seams and piping, then the corners and the label, then the box spring edge.
• Get the flashlight into the headboard gap. Purdue University Extension points to the space behind a headboard fastened to the wall as a common hiding place in hotel rooms, and tells inspectors to light the crack between the wall and the headboard.
• Check the luggage rack itself. The EPA tells travelers to inspect luggage racks and then use them, rather than setting a bag on the bed or the floor.
• Look at what sits next to the bed. The nightstand drawer runners, the seam of an upholstered chair, the edge of the carpet behind the headboard.

Ohio State University Extension's travel list of useful items is short and worth copying: a strong flashlight, a sticky lint roller, a magnifying glass, a spare credit card you can cut up as a probe, and a few zip top bags. Your phone light and a hotel key card cover most of that.

What You Are Actually Looking For

Almost nobody finds a live insect. The evidence is what a bed bug leaves behind, and it is easier to see than the bug itself.

The rust colored marks are the most useful sign, because they persist. They are digested blood, and they sit on fabric long after the insect that left them has moved a few inches away.

If You Find Something

Stop unpacking, close and zip your bag, and take it out of the room. Then tell the front desk what you found and where, rather than just asking to be moved. Purdue Extension publishes a bed bug checklist and an inspection reporting form for hotel management, so this is a documented process for a property, not an accusation. Staff can only act on a room they know about.

If you do change rooms, ask for one well away from the first, not the one next door. A room that shares a wall with an infested one is not a fresh start. Before you leave the property, check your own bags again with the flashlight, especially the outside pockets and the seams around the zippers.

Managers of hotels and short stay properties are working the other side of the same problem. Our hospitality pest management programs are built around routine inspection and documentation, because a single reported room handled quickly is a very different event from one that gets discovered by a guest review.

Getting Home Without Bringing Anything Inside

The doorway is where a trip either ends or starts a much longer problem. Ohio State University Extension tells returning travelers to bag and seal clothing and belongings before entering, heat treat whatever they can in the dryer immediately, then wash in hot water and dry again.

The dryer is the part that does the work. The EPA is specific that time in a dryer at high temperature kills bed bugs and that washing alone generally will not, and it advises unpacking directly into a washing machine. Cornell University's Integrated Pest Management program puts numbers on it: heat of about 125 degrees Fahrenheit kills bed bugs, 122 degrees is immediately lethal within a minute of exposure, and running a dryer on its hottest setting for 30 minutes kills bed bugs and their eggs.

Then deal with the suitcase itself. The EPA says to store luggage away from the bedroom, in a basement or garage, and never under the bed. Purdue Extension suggests containing the bag in a large plastic bag and keeping it in a garage or storage closet rather than the bedroom. A suitcase parked under the bed for a week is the single most efficient way to move a problem from a hotel into your own mattress.

How You Would Find Out Weeks Later

Bites are a late and unreliable signal. The American Academy of Dermatology notes that some people develop itchy welts within a few days of the first bites, but that it can take as long as 14 days before bites itch, because the body needs time to build a reaction. Some people never show a mark at all. That lag is why a trip from earlier in the month is so often the honest answer to marks that appeared this week.

The insects themselves are not much easier to catch in the act. Ohio State University Extension's bed bug fact sheets put peak activity between midnight and 5 a.m., with the insects drawn by breath and body heat, and note that they can survive up to 70 days without feeding. A light population can go a long while before anyone sees anything.

So check the room instead of watching your skin. Our room by room inspection guide walks the search at home, and our post on store bought sprays and foggers explains why the first instinct after a discovery usually makes the job harder. When an infestation is confirmed, ThermaLock heat treatment is our lead method, because it reaches every life stage including eggs, usually in a single day, and leaves no chemical residue behind.

Bed bug inspections are free, in North Canton and across Stark, Summit, Portage, Wayne and Tuscarawas counties. If a trip has you worried, our bed bug treatment page covers what an inspection looks at and what follows it. Book one through our request form or call 330-494-6199, and if we find nothing, you get to stop thinking about it.