One of the most stubborn and common pest—bed bugs can be present anywhere and create a worrisome crisis for the hospitality industry. Rooms clean of pests one night can get infected by a guest the next night. This poses a threatening challenge to hotels’ housing, keeping as there are several potential hiding spots and areas for bed bugs to thrive.
Moreover, these creepy bugs don’t only hit hard your hotel’s reputation but also put the health of your guests and staff at risk. Present times have even witnessed a surge in litigation by guests, which have cost hotels millions of dollars.
So, here some tips to help you mitigate the risk of bed bugs successfully to avoid such a loss and maintain your reputation.
Educate & Train Your Housekeeping Staff
Housekeeping staff is the primary defense against bed bug infestation on your property. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to properly educate your staff on looking for signs of bed bugs and making their training a priority for keeping these stubborn pests away from your hotel.
Also, since bed bugs are usually infested into a hotel room via a guest’s luggage, you should train your housekeeping staff to properly inspect, look for any signs, and immediately address any problems. You should also train them to use different bug eradicating devices like UNIVERSAL Bed Bug Heater Package for better protection.
Other training may include:
- Teaching your staff to identify bed bugs by appearance and behavior effectively.
- Practicing thorough laundering and room-cleaning techniques.
- Providing them adequate equipment like flashlights so that they can inspect and eliminate pest infestation.
Pay Heed To Guests’ Complaints
Customers are like God for the hospitality industry. Therefore, attention should be paid to customer complaints as they can significantly help the concerned department tackle a bed bug infestation efficiently. With digitalization, where online reviews determine a property’s reputation, it is highly recommended to regularly check for online review sites to find insect bites or similar. But it’s equally important to investigate these complaints immediately as it can help you identify the issue of bed bugs in your hotel that might have gone ignored.
Frequent Inspection Of The Rooms
Due to adjacent rooms in hotels, bed bugs can spread quickly from one room to another, creating great chaos. Therefore, to prevent an infestation breakout at your property, ask your housekeeping to give a thorough inspection regularly to check bed bugs in adjacent hotel rooms, including lobbies and other recreational areas. When inspecting rooms for bed bugs, the staff must ensure to check in small cracks and crevices near the bed, in skirting boards, or bedside cabinets, as these are the thriving areas of bugs.
Conclusion
Therefore, if a bed bug infestation is ignored for long, it can create more severe problems in eliminating these pests as they can thrive in the hard-to-reach areas, and quickly they breed and spread. Thus, taking a strategic approach as soon as bed bugs are detected can easily eliminate and save your money.
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