Vacation season is great for everyone! Vacationers get to experience a new place. Hotel managers get their busy season. All kinds of local businesses get an influx of new customers. Unfortunately, everyone includes some things we wish didn’t get a vacation season. Like bed bugs. As vacationers come into town, they bring all kinds of bed bugs with them. 

Bed bugs spread by hitching rides on unsuspecting travelers. They’re particularly prevalent in busy traveling seasons like late summer. In fact, around this time of year pest professionals receive more calls about bed bugs than any other pest. Even worse, bed bugs don’t just inflict themselves on the hotel or hospitality industry, either. Bed bugs will infest any type of business that has hiding places and people to feed on. If you want to keep bed bugs out of your business this vacation season, you’ll have to:

Focus on training your employees on helpful habits.

There are certain things anyone can do to prevent picking up unwanted bed bugs while traveling. Consider hosting a training session or sending out an email to your employees. Good bed bug prevention vacation habits to teach your employees include:

1. Always inspect any hotel rooms you visit. 

Pull back sheets, inspect the seams on the mattress, and look behind the headboard and under chairs. 

2. Keep your suitcase off the ground. 

Most hotel rooms offer a storage rack for your luggage. Use it! Keeping your bag off the ground makes it harder for bed bugs to crawl into it.

3. Wash all your clothes as soon as you’re back home. 

Including the clothes you didn’t wear. When you wash everything, use your washer’s hottest water setting. Make sure you run everything through a full wash cycle. If any unnoticed bed bugs snuck onto your clothing, a full wash cycle will kill them before they can infest your home.

Make sure employees know the main signs of a bed bug problem. 

Teach your employees what bed bugs look like and where to spot them. Bed bugs are oval, flat, dark brown, and don’t have wings. They typically measure around a quarter of an inch long.

Bed bugs love fibers and linens. You’re mostly like to find them around mattresses, box springs, headboards, bed frames, outlets, couches, chairs, cracks in the floor, and behind pictures. They leave behind characteristic dark reddish-brown smears anywhere they’re infesting.

Be proactive. 

There are bed bug traps and monitors on the market that can help you catch infestations early. As long as you’re in the habit of taking a look at them each day, you can spot the signs of any bed bugs right away. That’ll allow you to make sure no infestations spread and interrupt the flow of your business. 

Keep vacation season fun by protecting your commercial building from pesky bed bugs. That way you, your employees, and your customers can have fun in the sun without added worry. 

If you suspect, despite your best efforts, that you have a bed bug problem, give us a call. The team at Assured Environments can help you get rid of unwanted visitors without any unnecessary downtime for your business.