Hotel Bedbug Treatment Camden

Why Luggage Is the Part to Plan For

A suitcase is opened on a rack or a bed, lived out of for a few nights, zipped up and wheeled away. If bedbugs are in the room, they can get into the seams of the case and the clothes inside. If they came in with the guest, the case is where they came from. Either way, the bag is the thing that moves between rooms, between hotels and between countries.

What a hotel should do in the first hour after a report, and how a room is treated and handed back, is on our London hotel bedbug treatment page for the full explanation. Here we stay with the bags, because in a hotel full of international guests that is where most of the decisions are.

The Guest Who Reports It

A guest far from home who finds bites or a bug is usually worried about two things: their skin and their luggage. Deal with both. For bites, point them to a pharmacist, or a GP if a reaction is troubling them, and to 999 if there are signs of a severe allergic reaction. For luggage, give them something practical to do rather than a general apology.

• Move them to a room that is not next to, above or below the affected one, and carry nothing across except what they need.
• Suggest the clothes they have worn and the clothes in the case go through a hot wash and a hot dryer before they are packed again. Offer your laundry if you have one.
• Suggest they check the seams and zips of the case, and keep it off the bed and the carpet in the new room, on a hard floor or a luggage rack that can be checked.
• Write down what they saw, where, and when, in plain words they can keep a copy of.

If the guest does not share a first language with your staff, keep a short written sheet of those points ready, so the advice is the same whoever is on the desk. Guests who ask what else is worth doing when they travel can be pointed to bedbugs in hostels and backpacker travel.

Your Luggage Room and Left Bags

Many hotels near the stations hold bags for guests before check-in and after check-out. A luggage room is a pile of cases from many rooms and many countries, pressed together, sometimes for hours. It is worth treating it as a place to check, not only the bedrooms.

• Keep stored bags off upholstered benches and carpeted corners; a hard floor or metal shelving is easier to look at.
• Give housekeeping or the night team a routine look at the room’s edges, shelves and any fabric.
• If a guest room is being treated, do not put that guest’s bags in with everyone else’s until they have been dealt with.

The London guide to where hotels should check for bedbugs covers the rest of the building.

Treating the Room and the Rooms Around It

The room itself is quoted on its own and usually treated with heat, which kills eggs as well and normally needs one visit, so the room can go back into use once it has cooled. Chemical costs less but runs as two or three visits about ten to fourteen days apart. The heat treatment page for Camden explains how the edges are handled in an older building, which applies to many converted hotels as well.

Rooms either side, above and below should be inspected before they are let again. If you are unsure whether a report is real, an inspection in Camden confirms it before you spend on treatment.

Prices and Booking

Hotel work is quoted on the rooms involved. Treatments start from £220, and inspections start from £120. Ring 0800 955 1018 with the room numbers, which are let tonight and which you can hold, and you get the figure on the phone before anything is booked. For the wider picture, see the Camden bedbug control page.

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