Nite nite, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite

Posted on December 14, 2023 Updated on December 15, 2023

You may have noticed a flurry of media interest during late September and October about increased incidents of bed bug infestations within the UK accommodation sector, particularly but not exclusively in and round, London.  Many of these reports cite alarming but unquantified increasing problems in other popular European city destinations and, in particular, Paris.  Some, not unreasonably suggesting a direct causal link the between the popularity of the European grand tours, and consequential travel between London and Paris, while global warming was also widely cited as a potential trigger.  The latter perhaps somewhat implausible, given the advent of central heating and the typical 365 day a year warmth of your average hotel room, now that coal fires and warming pans no longer serve to keep commercial accommodation and beds warm and damp free. 

Warmer climates may well have made it possible for the bugs to breed more easily, more often in more places, thus increasing the pool for greater global spread off the back of increased global travel and more recently a post covid recovery toward and beyond 2019 levels.  The size of the pool of infestation and potential exponential consequences for that  spread, I think may be a critical concept to get to grips with here.   Unchecked the more infestations there are the more there are likely to be.

Two month or more ago, I largely wrote the issue off thinking, or perhaps hoping, it was mainly media driven hype; the headline grabbing overreporting of normal but I presume, very infrequent problems.  I did so, not least because it wasn’t an issue that had ever been raised with me or that I had even heard of as a “problem” in the last thirty years working in relatively close proximity to all thing’s domestic tourism.  Meanwhile, as it typically does, the media interest waned as quickly as it had started.   A quick trawl of the “evidence” used, also suggested the only substantive, quantitive figure in the UK is a quote of a comparative 65% increase in callouts by Rentokil in London (?) between 2022 and 2023 (but no base figures are given or even if this figure is for commercial accommodation) There is also some again, unquantified reference to a spike in calls for assistance reported by Luton Council (domestic or commercial?). There may have been much more hard evidence to be had but, if there is, it isn’t that easily accessed.

That might well have been the end of my interest, had I not in my constant quest for genuinely useful intelligence come across a recently published YouGov survey on the issues for tourism.  Rather than trying to quantify the number of incidents in the UK and elsewhere, which to be frank we would have all found truly enlightening, the survey sought to establish what UK resident’s typical attitudes and responses would be, should they ever be unfortunate enough to experience a problem with bed bugs, here or abroad.

 For me the report prompted a bit of a “no, surely not Sherlock” moment. The finding can best be summarised as being: “very bad for business” with among other likely reactions: negative reviews, resistance to future and return bookings, demand for repayment and potential for legal action against owners and travel operators for damages. If there were any surprises at all, it was that the negative responses were not necessarily universal, with some people seeing it as a just another peril of (overseas?) travel or something they wouldn’t necessarily adversely react to.  The report is worth a read if you or anyone else doubt the potential seriousness for the domestic international inbound and domestic outbound industry should bed bugs genuinely become a common or well-established problem within holiday accommodation, whether that is here in the UK or in that used by UK residents in popular destinations abroad. 

Not unexpectedly the average Brit isn’t going to take being bitten by bed bugs lying down, even if that is precisely where they will be, should it ever happen to them. Nor indeed should anyone in our industry reasonably expect them to.  Although, apparently no one’s fault in the first instance, it become someone’s fault the moment the possibility of a bed bug infestations and sensible precautions to avoid them are wilfully or neglectfully ignored. See the report here.

Having said I was generally unsurprised by report the potential, obviously negative reaction prompted me to conduct a little more in-depth research of my own. What I very quickly and easily discovered and what for all I know, may already be common but discreetly hidden knowledge across the wider industry, is that there is indeed a potentially growing problem, albeit, its scale and pace may yet to be fully understood. If I understand the facts and the direction of travel correctly, it is only a matter of time (indeterminate) and a matter of luck, or lack of it, as to where and when any particular accommodation business might now be impacted.

The thankfully short sharp media interest 2 or 3 months ago combined with the finding of the YouGov research suggests that any future failure to take action on an individual business and on a wider cooperative destination basis, could be disastrous for any individual business involved and damaging for any destinations within which that business may identify itself. I also sense there may also be a risk of reputational damage to particular types of accommodation provision, a particular brand or a particular distribution model, unrelated to location. That is currently much more of a hunch and a logical extension of past experience, rather than an evidenced assertion.

The incident of bed bug infestation after many years of being widely under control is now on the increase within the UK and globally, allegedly since as early as 2005/06.  Global travel is the key driving factor but is hardly a new phenomenon.  Equally important and something that might explain my lack of previous awareness is the growth of resistance to common, previously easily and cheaply used insecticides.  Insecticides which during much of my adult life I now find had all but eradicated bed bugs as a common problem across much of the developed world and beyond.  Bed bugs, like other poison resistant pests, are now rapidly reversing their previous decline and consequently impacting across societies which have largely forgotten what they are and how to recognise or deal with them. Therein perhaps lies much of the potential current difficulties; how to deal with an ancient problem that by circumstance is now, effective a new and largely unfamiliar occurrence for both your customers and staff?

These problems are compounded by the reality that these bugs are skilled, albeit often entirely accidental hitchhikers.  Adult bugs scuttling about at night in someone’s home or more likely in visitor accommodation, will happily take shelter on clothing and in cases or bags as daylight approaches.  Only then to find themselves inadvertently carried home or on to other visitor accommodation, where on the next available night they will venture forth to accidentally take up residence and as like or not in a bedroom, they happen to find themselves in.  So, the spread continues and like a virus, accelerates as the potential points of contact and further distribution multiply.

Although, fortunately bed bugs generally cause only irritating and understandable revulsion, rather than carrying any form harmful to disease, there are still a number of other critical misconceptions that do need to be addressed.  There is no correlation between social status or living conditions and infestation.  Bed bugs are socially mobile; as happy in a hovel as they are in a palace and they make no distinction between living with and occasionally living off, paupers or Princesses.  Anywhere and anyone is vulnerable, it is simply a matter of bad luck to acquire their company and not one influenced by poor hygiene or unsavoury surroundings.  Regrettably, that isn’t the common perception and the typical social stigma attached is potentially the most significant damaging element of any infestation and any resulting PR or media coverage for an individual business or by inference local destination.

There are few useful facts that may help the understanding of the complex nature of the bed bug issue.  A single small apple pip sized and shaped adult female having mated is capable of laying eggs and starting an infestation, not least because the act of mating in bed bugs can fertilise several successive clutches of eggs without the further presence of an adult male. Adults can in the right conditions live for up to year, if possible, each typically feeding every 3 to 7 days. In a dormant state they can survive for much of their adult life without feeding, making proactive intervention essential, unless your intended response is abandonment of some or all of a building for well over a year!  

While they feed in the dead of night on sleeping humans, adults spend the rest of the day in hiding both in and around the bed and much more widely across a room in cracks and crevices, particular when their numbers and competition for safe havens are increased. From birth to adulthood, takes around 37 days in ideal 22^o  c conditions.  This involves 5 separate life stages between hatching and becoming an adult, each requiring a single feed of blood followed by a moult to progress.  Juveniles in those early life stages don’t draw blood as often as adults but do tend to travel less distance and are, thus, more likely to be found living unnoticed in and around the feeding ground of the bed and its immediate surroundings. Although they have a preference for human blood, bed bugs can feed on both cats and dogs, again at the dead of night and will then hide up in convenient places, including pet beds and bedding during the rest of the day.  Although, not a cause of the problem, pets can be part of it.

Combined these snippets lead to the conclusion that their life cycle isn’t simple and within that without remedial action, it can and almost certainly will take, several months from going from the situation of not having a problem at all, to suddenly having an all too obvious infestation highlighted in all likelihood by badly bitten customers and all probably due to something as simple as the unlucky arrival of a single fertilised female bug or a breeding pair of adults. If there was indeed a new issue in London in late summer, its true origins are likely to have been from the early summer season at the latest.  The odd adult on its unintentional travels might be encountered on occasion but infestations are seldom, if ever, just going to happens overnight.

Identifying the problem during this developmental window of many weeks to a few months is absolutely essential.  This slow often unnoticed build up period is both the bed bugs greatest asset and potentially its greatest weakness. Fortunately, apart from the occasional mite or adult bite that may go unnoticed the build-up and the bugs developmental processes leaves many telltale signs, including tiny dots of excretory spotting on bedding and other surfaces and small by unmistakable moulted exoskeletons and small white eggs in textile seams and cracks and other hidey holes, even if the small but developing mites themselves remain well hidden.   

All the best advice and there is now much more of it available online, is that staff servicing and managers checking rooms should have protocols in place and be properly trained to identify the early signs and critically from time to time actively look for them, especially in and around bedding and mattresses.  A potential infestation spotted and dealt with before it fully develops is a major problem avoided.   The second piece of good advice is to have policies and procedures in place and to train front of house staff and managers to handle incidents and any reports or complaints efficiently and effectively in the timeliest manner.  A well-handled first ever or subsequent complaint may be mitigated or managed away.  Whereas an adlibbed responses to first complaint has every chance of going very badly wrong. Far better to learn how to handle an incident, before it happens and before mistakes are made, than to wait in the hope of learning from your own or someone else in the team’s first experience.

There is also plenty of advice now available on the use of such things as inexpensive pheromone traps to aid detection and the procedures for containing and dealing effectively with any identified or suspected outbreak, from quarantining and disinfecting of vacuum cleaners, through to how to deal with guests’ luggage and belonging if moving them from an infested to another room.  Any effective incident response inevitably involves engaging professional assistance and typically include taking out of service all horizontally and vertically adjacent room during a short 24 to 48 hour but nonetheless potentially difficult and costly, period. 

My instinct is that larger hotels and especially the national and international chains will already be all over the issue and, because of the numbers of rooms, be far more able to adjust, should say six or a dozen rooms need to be taken out of service for a day or two. I also suspect they would have both the capacity and the means to better weather any immediate or more long-term negative PR or consumer backlash.  I hope I am right. I am far less convinced that the same could be said for the average small family run hotel, B&B, guest house, or holiday let. A serious badly handled incident at the wrong time of year, could easily be terminal for the average, still struggling small business. 

There is also advice on the issue available from a number of trade bodies, professional pest control companies, insurers etc. I am just not yet convinced that the people who would be well advised to take heed of it to avoid an incident however unlikely one may be, aren’t as yet full attuned to the very real and slowly increasing risk that it will at some point happen.  The risk of transfer between accommodation, or equally between accommodation, back home and subsequent at a later date on to other accommodation, can only be increased by accommodation providers leaving it to chance, in the forlorn hope that they will not become infested, or simply waiting until they do, before taking what are, or previously were, reasonable and relatively inexpensive precautions. 

If indeed there was genuinely a particular issue in London towards the end of the main summer season, everything I have since read on the subject, suggest to me that there are likely to be a number of consequential problems quietly maturing in other businesses, in other accommodation on the London first, then on to other UK destinations circuit.  If that isn’t addressed efficiently in these mixed domestic and international market focused venues, then there could, in due course, be subsequent problems for other more domestically focused venues, as domestic guests unknowingly pick up and spread our unwelcome little friends.  It is no more than a hunch but I would suggest it isn’t an entirely unreasonable one.

A necessarily (?) long explanation to finally get to the main point. Despite it being an awkward conversation, I think destination managers might be well advised to consider whether it is now an appropriate time to raise with local accommodation associations and appropriate individual accommodation businesses the very real prospects that bed bug infestations may now be increasing.  The ready availability of free trade association and professional services advice on what they might easily do now to protect customers and their business from this. The clear advantages of having protocols in place now and of training staff to proactively look for and identify the early telltale signs during the critical developmental window of opportunity, before one or two accidental hitchhiker bugs become many. And finally, the obvious benefit of having agreed policies, agreed responses and rehearsed procedures and training in place to handle any outbreak and/or complaint that might occur, as efficiently and effective, before they actual happen, rather than learning how best to handle any incident on the hoof.  

I should also stress that any conversations had with local business needs to be on the basis that while there may be reason to be concerned and take action to reduce any risks now, there is no substantive evidence yet to warrant panic or to feed a new wave of media speculation.  It is just a prudent precaution to counter any real or media hyped concern that the public may have now or experience in the future.  It is no more than plain old good customer care and good business practice to react to and remove any identifiable and easily addressed risk and to try and do so well before it can develop into something of any real substance.

Among the best of the industry advisory papers and one that I know that has been thoroughly fact checked is PASC’s advise to member professional self-caters.  It is being offered free to all comers and while written for self-catering operators, its advice is as relevant to B&B, guesthouses and smaller hotel and other accommodation providers, as it is to its intended target audience. Find it at: https://www.pascuk.co.uk/reports/