This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a reader from our WeChat group, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. Original article link.

You know how it goes: if you travel enough, eventually something unpleasant will happen. Here’s our experience dealing with bed bugs at a hotel, along with a few tips we learned from it.

Getting Bitten

This was still during our late-January Southern California trip. That day we switched to a different hotel, and check-in went smoothly. The front desk upgraded us to a junior suite, and the room was quite spacious.

That evening we met friends for dinner. After we got back to the hotel, we were getting ready for bed and scrolling on our phones in bed. Suddenly, the right side of my neck and shoulder started to feel itchy. I scratched it and kept scrolling. A little while later it started itching again and again, so my partner and I sat up in bed—and saw several tiny black bugs crawling on the bed, each smaller than a pinky fingernail.

My first thought was bed bugs. I had never actually seen them before, but they’re notorious in North America. Bed bugs feed on human blood, and once you find them, they’re very hard to eliminate. They’re tiny enough to hide in gaps as thin as a credit card, they reproduce quickly, and if you miss even one during treatment, you may end up with a whole new infestation later. Beyond the physical discomfort, bed bugs are a mental and emotional nightmare. Just imagine going to bed every night feeling anxious and waking up in the middle of the night from bites. High heat can kill both the bugs and their eggs. The traditional approach is to tent off the entire room and use steam. But that can damage a lot of things, and if the hiding spots don’t reach a high enough temperature, you have to do it all over again. Many people say that once you discover bed bugs, most measures have limited effect and the best option is simply to move out.

I jumped off the bed and looked in the mirror, only to find one on my body too, so I quickly slapped it off. In the mirror I could see several bite marks around my neck and shoulder. They looked somewhat like mosquito bites, but smaller and not swollen. At that point there were about four or five bugs crawling on the bed. My partner crushed one, and there was blood in it—presumably mine. I grabbed some Lysol disinfectant spray and blasted another one at close range until it died, then took photos as evidence. Lysol spray only works on bed bugs if you spray them heavily from very close up, and it does nothing to the eggs. We pulled back the sheets and mattress and found a mottled pattern underneath, with several black marks. We weren’t sure whether they were bloodstains from previous guests.

How the Hotel Handled It

My partner and I talked for only a few seconds before deciding we had to switch rooms. It was already 12:00 a.m., and our child was asleep. Fortunately, our child was sleeping on a rollaway bed and hadn’t been bitten. I went downstairs alone and explained the situation to the front desk. After looking at the bug photos, they moved us to a room four floors away and told me to give them all clothing that had touched the bed so they could send it out for professional laundering. At the same time, they said they would call in a professional pest-control team to inspect the room.

After all the chaos of moving rooms, our child, now awake, kept asking why we had to switch rooms. Once we got to the new room, we immediately took off all our clothes and showered. Because my partner hadn’t really dealt with bed bugs before, while packing up, they put clothes that had been on the bed back into the suitcase. So unfortunately I ended up taking all the clothes from every suitcase downstairs for the front desk to handle.

Once we were in the new room, my partner and I pulled up the sheets, duvet cover, and mattress and checked everything thoroughly. We didn’t find any bugs or any stains like the ones in the previous room. Even so, we still felt uneasy and went to sleep pretty anxious. Thankfully, the night passed without incident.

The next day, the hotel called to ask whether we wanted a professional team to inspect the new room too, and I said yes. Somehow, though, they only sent an experienced housekeeping staff member. She carefully knelt on the floor with a flashlight and inspected the bed in the new room as well as our suitcases. She said she found no signs of any bed bugs or eggs.

The bite area on my body didn’t get any worse and was barely itchy anymore. I just had a few small blood spots from scratching the night before. I checked Google and learned that everyone reacts differently to bed bug bites, and sometimes the reaction can show up later.

On the third day, when I went to the front desk to check out, I also asked whether the bugs from the previous room had been confirmed as bed bugs. The front desk said yes, they were definitely bed bugs. I then said that in that case, I wanted to request a refund. The front desk told me they had already refunded the corresponding points to my account, and I figured that was fine. The clothes they had sent out were also ready. I checked them and found that the high heat hadn’t damaged anything, but the bloodstain left by the bug on the tank top I wore that night hadn’t come out, so I threw it away.

We stayed at this hotel for a total of three nights. After we got home, just to be safe, the first thing we did was disinfect everything in all of our suitcases with bed bug killer, then wash and dry all the clothes again. We also bought diatomaceous earth and sprinkled it inside the suitcases. The idea is that its absorbent properties help kill bugs and eggs. That did make the suitcases very messy. Everything turned white and was not easy to clean off, but for peace of mind, it felt worth it.

Later, I shared the experience with coworkers. One colleague said he had gone through the same thing. Nothing seemed to work at first, but eventually they found a dog specially trained to sniff out bed bugs. The dog could detect both bugs and eggs, and wherever it alerted, they used high-heat treatment there. It was very effective, and the infestation was cleared through that treatment.

What Happened Afterward

I thought that would finally be the end of our battle with bugs, but the aftermath was pretty dramatic too. About three weeks after we got home, my partner and I both suddenly developed red bumps on our bodies. It wasn’t hives and it wasn’t eczema, and we had no idea what it was. Mine was worse—a large patch of bumps on my shoulder area. It wasn’t exactly where the bed bugs had bitten me, but it was close. It didn’t hurt, and it didn’t itch unless touched. My partner and I frantically searched the bed for bugs and found nothing, but psychologically it really got to us.

I went to see a primary care doctor, who said it looked like bug bites and prescribed a pretty intense medication that had to be applied from head to toe, everywhere except the hair. I wanted a second opinion, so I made an appointment with a nearby dermatologist. Thankfully, the dermatologist said she didn’t think they were bug bites. She also said the medication prescribed by the previous doctor was for a different kind of bug, and she didn’t think that was the issue either. She scraped some skin cells and examined them under a microscope, and there were indeed no signs of bugs. She said it could have been an immune response caused by the previous bites, or an immune response caused by contact with something else. In any case, she told me not to worry—there probably were no bugs in our home. She prescribed some topical medication, and by the time I was writing this article, the bumps were already more than halfway gone.

That period of constant suspicion and anxiety has finally come to an end too—hopefully.

About Bed Bugs

Bed bugs are usually brought into hotels through other travelers’ luggage, so they don’t necessarily have much to do with how clean a hotel is. In other words, bed bugs can show up at hotels of any price level. That said, hotels can absolutely do a better job checking the condition of their bedding, so this was clearly a housekeeping failure. The hotel was Renaissance ClubSport Aliso Viejo Laguna Beach Hotel. Overall, I’d say their handling of the incident was barely passing. Other than this experience, the hotel was pretty good. It had a very well-equipped fitness club, a separate kids pool, and a kids splash area, and the water was nice and warm. Overall, it’s a decent 4-star hotel.

Besides the steps mentioned above, I also came away with a few takeaways:

  1. When you enter a hotel room, pull back the sheets and check the mattress first for obvious multiple dark spots. Hotel bedding is usually white, so signs are relatively easy to spot.
  2. Bed bugs usually don’t burrow into clothing, so sleeping in pajamas may be a little safer. That said, it doesn’t solve the problem—the bugs may still bite your face.
  3. If your body suddenly feels itchy, especially around the neck and shoulders, stay alert and check right away to see whether there might be bed bugs.
  4. If you find bugs, immediately heat-treat your clothes, inspect your luggage, and switch rooms—or even switch hotels if necessary.

Hopefully none of you run into something this awful on your travels.

How to File a Complaint (by ymlulu)

Here’s one more point about hotel complaints. If you stay at a hotel and run into sanitation issues or rude service, don’t be afraid to speak up. For small issues, you can call the front desk directly. If they resolve it, great. If you’re not satisfied, ask to speak with a manager. For more serious issues, hotels will often offer some form of compensation—something small like a fruit plate or breakfast, or something bigger like waiving the room charge or giving you a free-night certificate. Large hotel chains generally care a lot about guest reviews, especially if you have elite status, so they tend to take your concerns seriously.

If you didn’t get a chance to complain during your stay, you can also use the customer contact form on the hotel’s official website. For example, here is the one for Hilton:

If complaining to the hotel goes nowhere and you’re still very upset, you can also turn to BBB. Once BBB gets involved, companies will usually take your complaint more seriously.

About the Author

This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a reader from our WeChat group, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. The account features original and well-written posts, so feel free to follow if you’re interested.

Bonus:

If you’re curious and not squeamish about bugs, scroll down to see photos of the bed bugs. If you’d rather not look, just close the page here.