Hotel Bedbug Treatment Ealing

When the Report Comes After the Guest Has Gone

With short stays, the warning often arrives by email days later, from someone who has since slept in two other beds. You cannot inspect their luggage and you cannot be sure the bites came from you. Treat the report as a reason to look at the room, not as a verdict, and do not argue the point in writing.

What you can do is work out which room they had and who has slept there since. A booking system that records room numbers against dates is the most useful tool you have. If the room has had three guests since, those later stays tell you something too: nothing reported may just mean nobody noticed.

How a hotel should handle a report and put the room back into service is set out on the London hotel bedbug treatment page for the full explanation. The rest of this page is about the short-stay, heavy-luggage end of the trade.

Suitcases, Racks and the Space Around the Bed

In a stopover room, the suitcase is open for the whole stay and often sits on the bed, the floor or a chair because the rack is too small. That is how bedbugs get into a room and how they leave it. When you set a room up, give the case somewhere obvious to go that is not the bed:

• A hard luggage rack or a bench, kept clear of the headboard and the wall.
• A bare floor space by the door rather than a carpeted corner next to the bed.
• No upholstered chair right beside the bed that invites a case to be opened on it.
• A simple note in the room asking guests to keep bags off the bed.

None of that stops a guest bringing bedbugs in. It makes it less likely they spread beyond the spot where the case stood, and it makes that spot easy to check.

Turning Rooms Every Day

When most rooms change every morning, the check at change-over is short but frequent. Lift the sheet at the head of the bed, look along the mattress edge and behind the headboard, and look at the rack. If housekeeping is one person, make it part of stripping the bed, not a separate round. The London guide on where hotels should check has the full list.

Keep linen from each room in its own bag until it is washed, and do not pile the day’s sheets on a landing. Lost property left in a room with a report should be bagged and sealed, not put in the office drawer with everything else.

Choosing a Treatment When Rooms Turn Over Nightly

For a business that sells rooms by the night, heat is usually the better fit. It is generally one visit, and the room can be let again once it has cooled, so you lose a day rather than a month. Heat costs more than chemical. What it looks like in a house-sized building is on the Ealing heat treatment page.

A chemical course costs less, but it means two or three visits about ten to fourteen days apart and the room kept empty until it is dry after each. That can work if a room can be taken out of sale for a few weeks. The chemical treatment page for Ealing sets out the course.

Check the rooms either side and above and below the reported one before re-letting any of them. A bedbug inspection can cover several rooms on one visit and gives you a written report.

Replying to a Guest Who Has Already Left

Reply promptly and politely. Thank them, say you are having the room checked, and ask for the dates and room number if they did not give them. Do not suggest they brought the bugs with them. Suggest they unpack on a hard floor at home and wash what can be washed, and that for bites a pharmacist or GP can advise; some people do not react at all. Signs of a severe allergic reaction need 999.

Keep a copy of the message, the room number, what you did and when. If more than one report comes in over a few months, that record shows us which rooms to look at first.

Prices for a Small Hotel

Hotel and guest house work is quoted on the rooms involved. Treatments start from £220 and inspections start from £120. Ring 0800 955 1018 with your number of rooms, the reported room and your next free night for it, and we give you the figure on the phone before anything is booked. For bedbugs in your own home rather than the guest rooms, see the borough page.

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