Travel Guides And Tips: Unwanted Guests - A 9 Point Plan for Avoiding Bed Bugs in Hotels

Of course, nobody wants to bring bed bugs home from a vacation or business trip. Here are nine tips for protecting yourself from bed bugs in hotel rooms.

Prepare before you depart. Pack your clothing and other belongings, including your toiletries and electronic gadgets, in large resealable plastic bags. Also, bring a flashlight (a small LED penlight is ideal).

Check in early at the hotel, so you have time to do your inspection. First check the metal luggage rack in the hotel room. Turn it upside down, check the straps, hinges, any little crevices, and check the feet. If it appears bug-free, put your luggage on it. Don't put your luggage on the bed or the floor.

Check the bed sheets for fecal spots or dried blood. These will look like dots from a black felt tip pen.

Inspect the headboard. This is the most likely place for bed bugs to hide in a hotel room. Why? Every day, the maid comes in and makes the bed, which disrupts their normal hiding places (the sheets and mattress). But the headboard is usually left untouched, which makes it an ideal place to wait for the next victim. Use your flashlight to closely inspect the crevices, screw holes, grooves and any notches, depressions or indentations. You are looking for any black spots, white powder (bed bug exterminator pesticide) and of course, the bed bugs themselves. Hint: In many hotels, you can get a look behind the headboard by removing it from the bed. It often just pops right off the bed (but be careful - headboards can be heavy).

Pull the sheets off the bed, pile them on the side of the mattress (not on the floor and not on any furniture). Check the sides and tufts of the mattress especially closely. Use your flashlight to illuminate any dark corners - bed bugs are small and hide in the smallest folds.

Check nearby furniture, including inside the drawers of the nightstand and any pictures hanging on the wall near the bed.

Take a look around the edges of the carpet, the baseboards, and the closet.

Even if you find nothing, assume the hotel room has bed bugs. Don't remove your clothing from the plastic bags except to wear it, leave your suitcase on the luggage rack, and never put anything in the hotel's dresser drawers or other furniture.

When you get home, assume you brought bed bugs with you. Unpack your bags outside, and immediately wash your clothing in hot water. If you can't wash in hot water, at least run your clothing through the dryer on hot for two cycles (high temps kill bed bugs).

What do you do if you detect bed bugs in your hotel room? Ask for another room (make sure it is a non-adjoining room, and not located above or below the infested room). It is possible for one room in a hotel to be infested with bed bugs, but others to be clear. Or, your could try another hotel, though that is not always convenient. Either way, you need to run through your bed bug hotel checklist in the new room too.

Jens Alexander is the owner of The Bed Bug Battle Plan, the website that provides a crash course in how to get rid of bed bugs.

Jens put up the site because he believes it's better to kill bed bugs than to research them.

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