How Do London Hotels Prevent Bedbugs Spreading From One Room to Another?

A bedbug will walk a few metres in a night. Left entirely alone it takes months to reach the room next door. What moves it in an afternoon is a linen bag, a vacuum cleaner or a trolley — which is good news, because those are things you control.

Route One: Linen

The commonest by far. Stripped bedding carried down a corridor over an arm drops what it is carrying along the way, and a linen bag that has held infested sheets holds bedbugs afterwards.

• Bag linen inside the room, at the bed, before it moves anywhere
• Seal the bag. An open bag on a trolley is a transport container with the lid off
• Disposable or dedicated bags for any room under suspicion, and they do not come back
• Laundry at the highest temperature the fabric takes, and a hot tumble dry, which is the step that actually kills them

Route Two: The Trolley

A housekeeping trolley visits fifteen rooms in a shift. If it collects a bedbug in room 204, it has offered it to fourteen others by lunchtime.

• The trolley stays in the corridor, not inside the room, wherever layout allows
• Never rest linen, cushions or soft items on the trolley
• A trolley that has been in a suspect room is taken out of service and inspected, not wiped and carried on with
• Hard surfaces, and a routine for checking the fabric parts — the soft bag on the end is the bit that holds them

Route Three: The Vacuum Cleaner

Underrated and genuinely serious. A vacuum used in an infested room has live bedbugs inside it, and the next room gets them delivered through the exhaust and the brush head.

• One vacuum per floor at minimum, and a dedicated one for any room under suspicion
• Cylinder or bag emptied straight into an outside bin, sealed, never into a corridor bin
• The brush head and the hose checked, because that is where they lodge
• A vacuum used in a confirmed room does not go back into circulation until it has been dealt with

Route Four: Staff and Uniforms

Rare but real, and worth handling without making anyone feel accused. An attendant who kneels on an infested bed can carry one out on a uniform.

The practical answer is a uniform that is laundered at the hotel rather than taken home, somewhere to change that is not a carpeted staff room full of soft seating, and a culture where saying 'I think there was something in 204' is normal.

Route Five: The Building Itself

The one you cannot solve with procedure. Bedbugs move along pipe runs, through service risers, under connecting doors and through the gaps where cabling passes between rooms.

• Seal around pipework and cable entries between rooms — cheap, permanent, and it closes the main structural route
• Brush strips or sweeps on connecting doors
• Attention to the risers during any refurbishment, when everything is open anyway
• Treat adjoining rooms as part of the same job, because structurally they often are

The Two Rules That Cover Most of It

Everything above is an application of those two sentences. A housekeeping team that has genuinely absorbed them will prevent more spread than any amount of treatment.

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