Evening cocktails, a USA TODAY paper, gym access, free Wi-Fi – even a chocolate chip cookie!
Hotels and motels rev up the hospitality to earn your business with goodies and freebies. But lately some unsuspecting travelers have discovered freebies that would make even the bravest guests squirm: bed bugs.
Although you may not have heard about them in decades, these insects exist. Increased global travel is one of the reasons their numbers have grown in the United States and more and more hotels and resorts, even some of the finest, have had these parasitic freeloaders check in uninvited.
There’s even an online bed bug registry consumers use to report bed bug sightings. At bedbugregistry.com you discover these blood-sucking insects do not discriminate the hotels and resorts they infiltrate: popular lodging places top the list of “Recent Bed Bug Reports.” On the web site there’s even a United States map with red dots covering east to west, revealing the cities and states of the latest bed bug findings.
It’s a hospitality industry wake-up call, that’s for sure.
Especially when guests who’ve experienced bed bugs in a hotel or resort spread the negative news about their experience via facebook, twitter, instagram (imagine that picture !), tripadvisor, hotels.com, and the bed bug registry. And these guests are never happy about the insect encounter, even going so far as to threaten lawsuits.
USA TODAY reported last year a New York woman filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the North Carolina Holiday Inn because she alleges she was traumatized after receiving 25 bed bug bites when she stayed at the hotel in October 2013. Lawsuits like this one can be financially debilitating to any hotel chain, even if the plaintiff loses.
So, what is the solution to protect a company’s financial security and more importantly its reputation?
Rather than wait for a bed bug complaint, industries and companies that provide overnight accommodations for the public are hiring experienced pest exterminating professionals like AZEX Pest Solutions to conduct proactive K9 bed bug inspections to nip the insects before they can nip a guest.
And because these small insects are excellent at concealing their precise location, AZEX Pest Solutions employ highly-reliable techniques, like K-9 inspections, to determine the presence of bed bugs.
Proactive K-9 inspections can successfully achieve a number of goals: prevent litigation and negative publicity and reduce treatment costs and bed bug proliferation with early detection. Because bed bugs can hide anywhere – under carpets, in walls, and other cracks and crevices including electronics, box springs and mattresses. However AZEX K-9’s are highly trained to locate bed bugs similar to the manner by which dogs detect illegal substances: with their acute sense of smell.
Dogs smell in parts per trillion, unlike humans, and can detect bedbugs through all life phases from egg to adult. AZEX K-9 sniffer dogs have found bed bugs within three minutes of their search, with an accuracy rate of 97 percent. Compared to humans who rely on visual detection that can take upwards of an hour or more, AZEX K-9 inspection dogs are extremely time- and cost- effective for a broad range of businesses, including hotels and resorts, apartment complexes, healthcare facilities, dormitories, and private homes.
AZEX recommends regularly-scheduled inspections, a minimum of once every quarter.
