Bed Bugs on the Strip
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/west/las-vegas-strip-hotels-bed-bugs/
Reason 1:
Reason 2:Quote: from that linked articleIn August, Nexstar’s KLAS obtained records from the Southern Nevada Health District showing bed bugs had been found at seven hotels along the Vegas Strip since early 2022: Circus Circus, Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, Palazzo, Tropicana, MGM Grand, and Sahara.
While that that news outlet is pointing to old data in a new story, a couple months ago, some other news outlet used the same data in a similar story.
Quote: AZDuffmanThis bed bug thing has been going since about 1999-2000. Back then I was in pest control and being in that biz we heard it first. A big reason they will appear in Vegas is international travelers carrying them. They are going to keep being a problem because in the USA we have a population afraid of pesticides since those same 1990s. This has meant preventative spraying cut way back to stopped. So out they come.
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I largely agree with you, though I think it's not restricted to international travelers, or even close to it. There may have been a time when the proliferation of bedbugs was primarily due to international travelers, but the dang things are so all over the place now that it could be anyone.
The other problem with the nature of bedbugs, and their ability to go long periods of dormancy without feeding, is that it's impossible to know (when they are found) what guest might have brought them in. Obviously, it wasn't automatically the guest prior to the guest who discovered them...and, in fact, it might even be the (current) guest who discovered them that actually brought them in.
There are online claims now that bedbugs are resistant to DDT, but I don't think I necessarily believe that. For one thing, I wouldn't put it past online sources to lie; secondly, my studies (from when I managed hotels) would have had it that DDT is the main reason why bedbugs were once largely eradicated in this country. In any event, it's now claimed that they are virtually immune to DDT...a claim that has me skeptical, at best.
In any event, that even Strip hotels would have bedbugs is no surprise whatsoever. I figure you could randomly pick any hotel in the country, regardless of its quality, and it's probably 50/50, at worst, to have bedbugs somewhere.
Quote: Mission146
I largely agree with you, though I think it's not restricted to international travelers, or even close to it. There may have been a time when the proliferation of bedbugs was primarily due to international travelers, but the dang things are so all over the place now that it could be anyone.
Maybe now, 25 years ago when I first was hearing about them they were unheard of in the USA for years and international travel was starting to boom so IMHO that is where they came from. Again IMHO most still come from overseas which is why a place like Vegas will have more but a place like Moundsville far less so.
Quote:There are online claims now that bedbugs are resistant to DDT, but I don't think I necessarily believe that. For one thing, I wouldn't put it past online sources to lie; secondly, my studies (from when I managed hotels) would have had it that DDT is the main reason why bedbugs were once largely eradicated in this country. In any event, it's now claimed that they are virtually immune to DDT...a claim that has me skeptical, at best.
I highly doubt that. If for no other reason than DDT has been gone for what? 40+ years? Immunity they once had will have watered down. Second, DDT immunity is more a thing in agriculture where you have a broad spray with a few survivors. Bedbugs you kill them all and they don't move about. For those of you who wonder, DDT was used inside all the time. When I was first in the industry I wish I had saved the journal with the picture of a woman spraying DDT over a baby crib.
FWIW we HATED bedbug calls. Reality these days is probably just replace the mattress. Alternative is container fumigation. For a hotel in Vegas that might be worth it except for the publicity. Thing is if the bedbugs jump to the floor and remain in the room they can jump back to the mattress or otherwise be carried there. Did I mention we hated bedbug calls?
I do not miss being in pest control.
Quote: AZDuffman
Maybe now, 25 years ago when I first was hearing about them they were unheard of in the USA for years and international travel was starting to boom so IMHO that is where they came from. Again IMHO most still come from overseas which is why a place like Vegas will have more but a place like Moundsville far less so.
You're basing all of this on extremely dated information. (Just the above---everything in the bottom quote is quite correct.)
The first clarification is that bedbugs are primarily a problem only in tourist destinations; that hasn't been true for at least a decade. Bedbugs have been a problem for hotels, across the map, for no less than the last decade---actually, it's more than a decade.
I would agree that international travelers brought them in, for the most part, I was just clarifying that such doesn't strictly apply anymore and hasn't strictly applied for well over a decade. Bedbugs were all but eradicated in this country, so, they mainly came from international visitors as well as Americans returning from their own international trips.
For one reason or another, the only thing that hotels have (though this could be old information as I am referring to a decade ago) strong enough to kill them and keep them gone involves sealing off individual guest rooms for several weeks. They may have made machines by now that can kill them with sufficiently high, or low, temperatures, but when I was in the hotel business, there was no real way to get individual rooms sufficiently hot to kill them. You'd also still have to remove EVERYTHING from the room, including some things that are normally fixed, as well as outlet covers, etc...so they'd have nowhere to hide from the heat. If any manage to survive the heat blast, then you have done all of that work for nothing.
Quote:I highly doubt that. If for no other reason than DDT has been gone for what? 40+ years? Immunity they once had will have watered down. Second, DDT immunity is more a thing in agriculture where you have a broad spray with a few survivors. Bedbugs you kill them all and they don't move about. For those of you who wonder, DDT was used inside all the time. When I was first in the industry I wish I had saved the journal with the picture of a woman spraying DDT over a baby crib.
FWIW we HATED bedbug calls. Reality these days is probably just replace the mattress. Alternative is container fumigation. For a hotel in Vegas that might be worth it except for the publicity. Thing is if the bedbugs jump to the floor and remain in the room they can jump back to the mattress or otherwise be carried there. Did I mention we hated bedbug calls?
I do not miss being in pest control.
I don't think they were immune to DDT back when they were exposed to it. Other than the heat idea, from what I had read many years ago, DDT was the only thing that consumers once had direct access to that could kill them with relative ease. I guess the sulphur candles were supposed to have worked, as well, but any sulphur candles sufficiently concentrated/powerful were also banned from consumer use. I guess too many people weren't following the directions appropriately and were accidentally killing their own kids, pets or selves...or something.
Honestly, there's no reason to even bother replacing the mattress. Just get a bedbug cover (if you're a hotel) and hope for the best. The new mattress will just get bedbugs, as well, because they're hiding elsewhere. The only way to ensure they're gone is to blast a room and make sure that none survive, but even then, it's trivial for bedbugs to hitch a ride on housekeepers from room to room.
Even if there were some way to avoid that, if you do the treatment on the room and then the very next guest has their own bedbugs that they bring---what was even the point of doing the treatment? It's a super expensive treatment, not to mention the opportunity cost of the room being down, that can just be negated completely by the very next guest to whom you rent the room.
His goal was to buy in and then sell to a larger company. I can't find his company anywhere so I guess he either sold or went out of business.
Quote: Mission146(Quotes-in-Quotes removed)
Quote: AZDuffman
Maybe now, 25 years ago when I first was hearing about them they were unheard of in the USA for years and international travel was starting to boom so IMHO that is where they came from. Again IMHO most still come from overseas which is why a place like Vegas will have more but a place like Moundsville far less so.
You're basing all of this on extremely dated information. (Just the above---everything in the bottom quote is quite correct.)
The first clarification is that bedbugs are primarily a problem only in tourist destinations; that hasn't been true for at least a decade. Bedbugs have been a problem for hotels, across the map, for no less than the last decade---actually, it's more than a decade.
I would agree that international travelers brought them in, for the most part, I was just clarifying that such doesn't strictly apply anymore and hasn't strictly applied for well over a decade. Bedbugs were all but eradicated in this country, so, they mainly came from international visitors as well as Americans returning from their own international trips.
For one reason or another, the only thing that hotels have (though this could be old information as I am referring to a decade ago) strong enough to kill them and keep them gone involves sealing off individual guest rooms for several weeks. They may have made machines by now that can kill them with sufficiently high, or low, temperatures, but when I was in the hotel business, there was no real way to get individual rooms sufficiently hot to kill them. You'd also still have to remove EVERYTHING from the room, including some things that are normally fixed, as well as outlet covers, etc...so they'd have nowhere to hide from the heat. If any manage to survive the heat blast, then you have done all of that work for nothing.Quote:I highly doubt that. If for no other reason than DDT has been gone for what? 40+ years? Immunity they once had will have watered down. Second, DDT immunity is more a thing in agriculture where you have a broad spray with a few survivors. Bedbugs you kill them all and they don't move about. For those of you who wonder, DDT was used inside all the time. When I was first in the industry I wish I had saved the journal with the picture of a woman spraying DDT over a baby crib.
FWIW we HATED bedbug calls. Reality these days is probably just replace the mattress. Alternative is container fumigation. For a hotel in Vegas that might be worth it except for the publicity. Thing is if the bedbugs jump to the floor and remain in the room they can jump back to the mattress or otherwise be carried there. Did I mention we hated bedbug calls?
I do not miss being in pest control.
I don't think they were immune to DDT back when they were exposed to it. Other than the heat idea, from what I had read many years ago, DDT was the only thing that consumers once had direct access to that could kill them with relative ease. I guess the sulphur candles were supposed to have worked, as well, but any sulphur candles sufficiently concentrated/powerful were also banned from consumer use. I guess too many people weren't following the directions appropriately and were accidentally killing their own kids, pets or selves...or something.
Honestly, there's no reason to even bother replacing the mattress. Just get a bedbug cover (if you're a hotel) and hope for the best. The new mattress will just get bedbugs, as well, because they're hiding elsewhere. The only way to ensure they're gone is to blast a room and make sure that none survive, but even then, it's trivial for bedbugs to hitch a ride on housekeepers from room to room.
Even if there were some way to avoid that, if you do the treatment on the room and then the very next guest has their own bedbugs that they bring---what was even the point of doing the treatment? It's a super expensive treatment, not to mention the opportunity cost of the room being down, that can just be negated completely by the very next guest to whom you rent the room.
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So it appears we have both been out of our businesses for some time. Whether Americans coming back or international coming over matters not. they came from abroad but have found a home here. I would have to think a space treatment could be done for individual hotel rooms. For those not PCOs, that is what Jerry had done when Newman gave his apartment fleas. Naturally most hotels could not do this on their own, even big places like Wynn would just contract it out. Maybe Disney would have an in-house team, they are the only ones I can picture doing so.
The problem is you have to treat where a person will be lying for 6-9 hours, so you want limited residual effect. But without residual effect, what you do not kill on the spot stays alive.
Bottom line, glad I left the industry as they fired up as our upper management never took this kind of thing serious enough.
Quote: billryanI had a friend in NY who bought into a company that froze bed bugs. They bring in these machines to treat everything and then put all your belongings in a deep freeze truck overnight. It was several times the price of other treatments but they anticipated extensive growth.
His goal was to buy in and then sell to a larger company. I can't find his company anywhere so I guess he either sold or went out of business.
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The problem is the market for that kind of thing is not big enough. Only a few people can afford it, and they can just replace everything in some cases.
I still lay much of the blame on a chemophobic population who got used to a pest-free world and thinks no pests happens by magic.
Quote: AZDuffman
So it appears we have both been out of our businesses for some time. Whether Americans coming back or international coming over matters not. they came from abroad but have found a home here. I would have to think a space treatment could be done for individual hotel rooms. For those not PCOs, that is what Jerry had done when Newman gave his apartment fleas. Naturally most hotels could not do this on their own, even big places like Wynn would just contract it out. Maybe Disney would have an in-house team, they are the only ones I can picture doing so.
The problem is you have to treat where a person will be lying for 6-9 hours, so you want limited residual effect. But without residual effect, what you do not kill on the spot stays alive.
Bottom line, glad I left the industry as they fired up as our upper management never took this kind of thing serious enough.
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(Quote-in-quote removed)
Space treatment is very costly and labor intensive. Again, the two biggest problems are that:
1.) Treating a single room isn't necessarily going to solve the problem, and:
2.) Even if it was guaranteed to solve the problem, the very next guest of that room could also have bedbugs on their own clothes/luggage anyway!
Basically, the costs would be so ridiculous, and you'd have to do it so frequently, that hotels would legitimately have to double their rates if they were going to pay for bedbug treatments every time.
The heat treatment is that you have to get the room up to 118F for ninety minutes to guarantee that the bugs and the eggs are all destroyed. Naturally, you're going to shoot for a temperature closer to 125F if you want to go that route because it has to be 118 everywhere. Anywhere they could possibly burrow and hide needs to hit that 118F for an hour and a half.
Beyond that, you have to take EVERYTHING out of the room. Those things are all but flat if they haven't fed recently. It's not like you just pull the mattress and box springs out, and even if it were that (and other loose furniture) you have to take care to ensure that no bedbugs get from that to elsewhere, or get on the actual people removing the furniture and then you have to either treat THOSE items or throw them away. It's most likely going to be throw those furniture items away if you're going to even attempt to go the whole nine yards on a room.
However, you also have to remove fixed elements because fixed elements have crevasses and these little bugs can get behind things and theoretically be protected from the heat. The HVAC unit has to go (which is also a problem because NOW you have a huge part of the room that is directly exposed to outdoors, so now you have to cover THAT and still get the whole room to 125F for a prolonged period of time.
Any curtains have to go---and there's no way those are not getting thrown away. That actually sucks because those are fire-rated and fairly expensive.
The next thing is if you have furniture such as desk or headboard affixed to the wall (all of ours were), now THAT needs to be disassembled and removed from the room. In the case of suites, you'd have to remove the middle pseudo-kitchen area entirely...or at least make absolutely sure that nothing was in it and seal it up tighter than a virgin wearing a chastity belt.
The fridge and microwave also have to go and will probably be thrown away. Coffeemaker, obviously, but those were like five bucks.
All outlet covers and any other fixtures need to be removed. Call it an overabundance of caution, but the sinkhole, toilet and shower drain all need to be thoroughly sealed up so they have no possible avenue of escape there. Actually, it would probably be better just to remove the toilet entirely and seal the floor...too many places to hide. Removing the sinks wouldn't have been an option, in most of our rooms, because they were affixed to the wall.
You would have to remove any mirrors that were affixed to walls, and pictures, obviously.
Essentially, you do all of this and it's a few hours of labor (for hotel staff) plus paying the pest control company, for something that might or might not work. Even if it does work, the very next guest can theoretically negate it.
In short, I would say that, unless something has changed, there's no practical way for a hotel, in terms of time/money cost, to reasonably deal with the issue of bedbugs. That's especially true since they could just be reintroduced at anytime anyway.
ADDED: Also, any vents, such as in the bathroom---you have to remove that fixture (and make absolutely sure nothing is up there) and then seal that hole.
Quote: Mission146Quote: AZDuffman
So it appears we have both been out of our businesses for some time. Whether Americans coming back or international coming over matters not. they came from abroad but have found a home here. I would have to think a space treatment could be done for individual hotel rooms. For those not PCOs, that is what Jerry had done when Newman gave his apartment fleas. Naturally most hotels could not do this on their own, even big places like Wynn would just contract it out. Maybe Disney would have an in-house team, they are the only ones I can picture doing so.
The problem is you have to treat where a person will be lying for 6-9 hours, so you want limited residual effect. But without residual effect, what you do not kill on the spot stays alive.
Bottom line, glad I left the industry as they fired up as our upper management never took this kind of thing serious enough.
link to original post
(Quote-in-quote removed)
Space treatment is very costly and labor intensive. Again, the two biggest problems are that:
1.) Treating a single room isn't necessarily going to solve the problem, and:
2.) Even if it was guaranteed to solve the problem, the very next guest of that room could also have bedbugs on their own clothes/luggage anyway!
Basically, the costs would be so ridiculous, and you'd have to do it so frequently, that hotels would legitimately have to double their rates if they were going to pay for bedbug treatments every time.
Unless things have changed a ton I can't see it being more than a couple hundred bucks. Price it in to the regular program, do X rooms per month. 125F presents other problems. So no easy answer.
Quote: gamerfreakGreat YouTube video relevant to the conversation…
https://youtu.be/2JAOTJxYqh8
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Great video!
The one thing I didn’t hear mentioned, or maybe I missed it, is that bedbugs inject a local anesthetic when they feed. That’s why, even if you’re a person with an allergic (rash) reaction to them, generally, you won’t notice when they’re feeding.
Upon return to a regular house within a few days the skin irritation disappears.
