Hotels, motels and lodges can have all sorts of creatures you want to avoid. Finding a rat, mouse, snake or cockroach in your room can spoil your stay.
However, those things are pretty easy to see with the naked eye. As soon as you spot one, you can get out of the room and go to the reception and ask them to sort it, move you to another room or refund your money.
Bed bugs are much smaller – 3/16 – 1/4 inch long – thus harder to spot. You might not know your room has them until it is too late, and you wake up covered in bites.
Is there nothing you can do?
While you might not be able to spot whether a room has bed bugs every single time, you often can find them with a little careful checking. Here is one thing you can do to check for them before you unpack or jump between the sheets:
Lift the covers and look carefully
While you have paid someone else to make the bed up for you, unmaking it a bit is a wise precaution, especially in sketchy-looking accommodation. Check for the following:
- Bed bugs’ exoskeletons: Their skeletons are on the outside of their body, so they need to shed them to grow.
- Dried spots of blood: Getting blood out of sheets is difficult, and spots may remain if bed bugs bit a previous guest.
- Bed bug excrement: If you see tiny black dots, this may be what it is.
If bed bugs spoiled your overnight stay, contact our bed bug attorneys to examine your options for compensation.