Hearing the term "bed bug" makes any home or business owner cringe. These tenacious nocturnal feeders will infest a hotel quickly, and they are a nightmare to eliminate once they've made themselves comfortable in your Aiken establishment.
Bed bugs can’t fly, so you may wonder how they get around. They can crawl around within an affected area, and eventually, they can move from one room to another.
Hotels, motels, resorts, and other public access areas are hotbeds for the bed bug. This is because bed bugs rely on people to get them from one place to another. Think of them as tiny little hitchhikers. They find their way onto clothes, into purses, briefcases, and suitcases, and then they hitch a ride to another location, where they begin to thrive. It’s a vicious cycle in hotels and resorts because people are always coming and going, bringing in new bed bugs while transferring them to other locations. Despite your best efforts to keep your establishment clean, once bed bugs are inside, they are difficult to get rid of without taking extreme measures.
In the end, it's best to be armed with as much knowledge as possible when dealing with bed bugs or other pests. Here is what every hotel and resort manager in Aiken ought to know about bed bug prevention.
What Can You Do To Prevent Bed Bugs From Infesting Your Aiken Hotel?
Bed bugs are small, but you can spot a bed bug problem by looking for small dark spots on sheets and other bedding. These spots are excrement and blood. Bed bugs feed on human and animal blood.
They are capable of reproducing quickly, which is why it’s important to prevent them in the first place. A female bed bug lays about 100 eggs in a month. Egg laying is spread out, so by the end of the month, there can be about 50 or 60 nymphs and 30-40 eggs waiting to hatch. By the end of the second month, the population might grow to ten breeding adults and around 200 developing bed bugs that will soon begin to breed.
As you can imagine, this makes it difficult to prevent bed bug infestations. An established infestation of bed bugs can easily take over an entire hotel and travel to other locations, making bed bugs one of the most widespread insect problems. While they aren’t known to transmit disease, their bites cause excessive itching and can be extremely annoying and hard to bear. Furthermore, they will quickly ruin your establishment if they become a problem for guests.
In hotels, it’s important to train employees about bed bugs and show them what they can do to help minimize the risk of a bed bug infestation. Here are some tips to mitigate bed bug activity:
- Be vigilant. If you train your housekeeping staff to look for bed bug signs like dark spots on the sheets, you can catch bed bug infestations as they occur and reduce the chance of allowing them to spread from room to room.
- Take all reports of bed bugs seriously. If guests are complaining of itching or report they have encountered bed bugs, investigate and begin the necessary treatment steps right away.
- Enclose mattresses and bedding in protective coverings.
- Ask employees to minimize what they take into rooms. Purses and other items that allow bed bugs to move from one place to another should be left somewhere safe.
You can’t afford to have bed bugs in your Aiken hotel or resort. It will ruin a guest's experience, and as they share their experience with others, a bed bug infestation will undoubtedly affect your bottom line. Don’t risk your business, the comfort of your guests, and the well-being of your employees. If you suspect you have a bed bug problem in Aiken, call Aiken Pest Control right away. Our qualified pest control experts can help you get rid of your bed bug problem quickly and effectively, saving your business thousands of dollars in lost revenue.