Bedbug Control Borough

The First Hours After a Report

When a guest reports bites or finds something in the bed, take the room off sale. Leave the bedding and furniture where they are rather than stripping the room straight away. Moving linen and mattresses through the corridors is how one room becomes several. Our guide on what to do when a guest reports bedbugs goes through it step by step.

1. Close the room and note which guest was in it, and when.
2. Offer the guest a move but keep their luggage off the carpet and bed in the new room.
3. Check the rooms either side, above and below. Bedbugs travel along walls, pipework and housekeeping trolleys.
4. Ring us with the room count so we can give you a figure and a date.

Heat or Chemical When Rooms Earn Money

Heat is usually the better fit for a hotel room. It is normally one visit, it kills the eggs as well as the adults, and the room is back once it has cooled. There is no second visit a fortnight later to work around bookings.

Chemical costs less per room, and each visit takes one to two hours. But because it does not reliably kill eggs, it needs two, sometimes three, visits about 10–14 days apart. A room can go back into use between them once it is dry, but it is not finished until the last visit. The hotel treatment page compares the two for hospitality.

Serviced Rooms and Short Lets

Serviced apartments and short-let rooms have the same problem as hotels with less staff on hand to spot it. Guests arrive and leave with luggage every few days. Nobody is checking the mattress between stays unless cleaning staff know what to look for. Our guide to serviced apartments and HMOs covers shared buildings of that kind.

Keeping It From Coming Back

Most of the prevention is in the housekeeping routine. Train staff to check mattress seams, headboards and luggage racks at every changeover. Give them somewhere to report what they find. A room that is caught early is one room, not a floor. Our guide on where hotels should check gives a list your team can use.

If you are not sure whether a report is real, an inspection from £120 confirms it before you pay for treatment. That matters when a complaint arrives after the guest has left and nobody has seen a bug. Treating a room on a guess costs money and takes it off sale; confirming it first tells you whether that is needed, and whether the rooms beside it are involved too.

When treatment is booked, give the team a clear list of which rooms are closed and why. Linen from those rooms should be bagged in the room and washed hot, not mixed with the rest of the laundry on the trolley.

Homes rather than hotels in Southwark are covered on our Southwark bedbug control page.

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