Sports fans heading to Paris this summer need to watch out for bedbugs, which have been spotted in the French capital. If you’re planning to visit to watch your favourite sports this summer, it’s important to take precautions to keep your clothes and luggage bug-free.
When you’re on vacation, you just want to relax and forget about the world for a few days. Once you’ve arrived, it’s tempting to let your guard down and let all of your worries drift away, but bed bugs can ruin memories of an otherwise wonderful trip.
Bed bugs are tiny insects which live in bedding or in your furniture. They can cause itchy red bites on the skin clustered around the face, neck and arms, which are often uncovered when you go to sleep.
Once you have bed bugs in your home, they are incredibly hard to kill, especially if they burrow their way into your soft furnishings.
Even if your hotel room looks spotlessly clean, it could be concealing a hidden bed bug infestation. Finding bed bugs doesn’t mean that your room is dirty, because normal cleaning methods won’t get rid of bed bugs.
Bed bugs are more common in popular tourist destinations such as Paris. If you’re heading to the 2024 Olympics or any other travel hotspot, we’d recommend taking precautions to keep your clothes and luggage bug-free.
If you’ve been unlucky enough to pick bed bugs up on your travels you’ll need to know how to get rid of them fast. A serious bed bug infestation can be expensive to eradicate, so preventing them getting into your home in the first place will save you time and money!
Fortunately, there are plenty of practical steps you can take to make sure bed bugs don’t stow away in your luggage when you head home.
Read on to learn how to check your hotel for bed bugs and what to do if you find them in your home.
How to check your hotel room for bed bugs
If your hotel room has been recently cleaned, it can be hard to know if there are bed bugs present or not, but you can check for bed bugs and take sensible precautions.
Even clean rooms can host bed bugs. Daniel Steward, Managing Director of Shield Pest Control, says: “Bed bugs are not indicative of poor hygiene and can infest any environment where people reside or stay, including homes and hotels.
‘The best way to avoid bringing bedbugs home from a holiday is to inspect your accommodation upon arrival. Thoroughly check the bed and surrounding areas for signs of bed bugs such as tiny blood spots, excretion marks resembling ink splatters, and cast nymphal skins.
‘Avoid placing your suitcase on the bed and instead, use a luggage rack if available. This reduces the risk of bed bugs following you home in your suitcase.’
When you arrive in your hotel, put your luggage and your coat in the bathroom away from any soft furnishings while you check for bed bugs.
Next, search your room for evidence of bed bugs. Bed bugs like to hide, so you’ll need to check in all of the nooks and crevices to find the bugs themselves. You’re looking for small reddish-brown insects in hard-to-reach places, such as under the mattress or around the bed frame.
Bed bugs like to be close to their source of food (you!), but they can also be found lurking in other areas in the room. For example, under rugs, around skirting boards, in USB sockets or even hiding in textured wallpaper.
It’s not always easy to spot bed bugs, so look around for other signs. Tell-tale clues include black dots in your bedding (bed bug faeces), red marks on the sheets from crushed bed bugs or even tiny yellow egg shells. If there’s an infestation, there may be a musty, slightly sweet smell in the air too.
Remember the old saying ‘sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite’? Bed bugs are nocturnal, so you’re more likely to see them in a dark room. Close the blinds or curtains and dim the lights, then make use of the flashlight on your phone to light up any dark corners.
HomeStyle Editor Kirstie Duhig spotted a bedbug when staying in a hotel in Brighton a few years ago but didn’t know what it was at the time. ‘We saw a little bug crawling on the fabric headboard and brushed it off, not realising it was a bed bug and that this was a sign that the room was infested.
‘Unfortunately, we then stored our suitcases and clothes on a spare bed in the room and ended up bringing bed bug eggs home with us,’ she explains. ‘Getting rid of them was a nightmare.’
5 travel tips to prevent bed bugs
Be a savvy traveller and plan ahead to protect yourself against bed bugs! Follow these top tips to avoid bed bugs on your adventures…
1. Wash or freeze your clothes and luggage
When you get home from your holidays, you’ll need to take action immediately to make sure bed bugs don’t transfer from your luggage to your home.
Immediately put your clothes in a hot wash set to 60℃/140℉, then tumble dry them on the highest setting. The heat will kill any bed bug eggs which might have contaminated your clothing. If your clothes are delicate, you can put them into the freezer for 72 hours to destroy the eggs (make room in your freezer before you go away!).
2. Use ziplock bags
Once your clothes have been through a hot wash, put them into a ziplock bag and keep them sealed while you do the rest of your laundry.
3. Quarantine your luggage
If you get home late, you’re probably tired and just want to go to sleep. Before you settle down for sleep, put your luggage somewhere safe so you can sort it out in the morning.
Ideally, you should store it somewhere outside of your house such as a garden shed to keep the bugs out of your home.
4. Choose washable luggage
Take luggage that you can wash at a high temperature when you return, so opt for a soft weekend bag rather than a heavy suitcase. Another option is to buy a suitcase with a washable lining that you can clean between trips.
5. Seal your clothes
Protect your clothes from bed bugs on your trip by storing them in ziplock bags before and after you wear them. This will reduce the chance that they’ll come into contact with bed bugs or their eggs. You’ll still need to wash the clothes when you return home though.
Early signs of bed bugs to watch out for
For many people, the first clue that they have bed bugs is when they notice bites on their skin. However, not everyone has a reaction to bed bug bites. You can be bitten by them and no marks will ever appear on your skin.
If you suspect that you have bed bugs in your house, keep an eye out for the following warning signs:
Reddish stains
Examine your bedding and mattresses for small red or rusty-coloured marks, which appear when the bugs are crushed.
Dark spots
Look for tiny dark spots on your sheets. This is bed bug excrement – a clear sign of an infestation.
Eggs and egg shells
You’ll need to look closely to find evidence of bed bug eggs and shells, as they are only 1mm in size.
Bed bugs
As well as other signs, you may be able to see the bed bugs themselves. If you don’t spot them, then the other clues should be enough to determine whether you have bed bugs or not.
Musty smell
If you can’t see the bed bugs, you may be able to smell them. Bed bugs emit a musty, sweet smell that some people describe as being similar to coriander, sweat or gone-off fruit.
This sickly smell is produced by the pheromones that bed bugs give off when they’ve been disturbed.
What do bed bugs look like?
Adult bed bugs are small and brown in colour, appearing reddish if they’ve recently fed on human blood. They’re about the same size as an apple seed, with rounded bodies. They don’t have any wings.
Younger bed bugs, known as nymphs, are paler and look whitish-yellow. They’re more translucent than adult bed bugs. Young bed bugs are much harder to spot with the naked eye than adult bugs.
What do bed bug bites look like?
Bed bug bites are raised and itchy, often appearing on the face, neck and arms. On white skin they look red, but on darker skin tones they may appear red or purple, according to the NHS.
The bites are often clustered together in groups on the skin or they may appear in a line.
Bed bug bites often clear up by themselves without treatment, but may swell or cause allergic reactions in rare cases.
The NHS recommends keeping bites clean and using a cool, damp cloth to soothe itchy skin. If your irritation is severe, it can be treated with hydrocortisone cream.
Bed bug bites can sometimes swell painfully and can cause a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) in rare cases.
Where do bed bugs come from?
It’s easy to pick up unwelcome hitchhikers when you’re on vacation, but they can also be found closer to home.
In 2023, Londoners complained about seeing bed bugs on the London Underground and a Freedom of Information request by Direct Line Insurance revealed that bed bug callouts by London councils rose by a fifth last year.
Bed bugs can be transported from place to place by latching on to clothing or luggage when it’s placed on soft furnishings. If bed bug eggs find their way into your luggage, you might not realise that you have bed bugs right away as it takes 7-10 days for the eggs to hatch.
'We visited the hotel in Brighton in May and didn’t realise we had a bed bug infestation until two months later in July when I found rows of itchy bites on my ankles,' says Kirstie.
'By then the bed bugs were well established, but because we didn’t know how to deal with them we panicked and did all the wrong things.
'We deep cleaned and hoovered, replaced our mattress and hot washed our clothes and linens, but we didn’t realise how vigilant we had to be with storing everything in air-tight bags so they just came back.'
How to get rid of bed bugs permanently
You’ve found the dreaded signs of bed bugs in your home, so what can you do? “If you do suspect bed bugs either whilst away, or at home, try not to panic. Although they are challenging to eliminate, it’s not impossible,” says Daniel Steward of Shield Pest Control.
Although there are a lot of ways to reduce the risk of bed bugs and to prevent them from returning, your best hope of getting rid of bed bugs is to call in the professionals as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more established your bed bug infestation will be.
Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Despite your best efforts, bed bugs can still find ways to move in. Finding bed bugs doesn’t mean that your home is dirty. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the bugs are actually attracted to blood, warmth and carbon dioxide.
There are a few different methods that can be used to kill bed bugs. Firstly, pest control experts can treat your home using heat.
'For a while we had most of our belongings stored in air tight bags and just used a few essentials to cut down on the amount of washing and risk of spreading the bed bugs.'
Kirstie Duhig, HomeStyle Editor
Steam cleaning kills both the bugs and their eggs in one fell swoop and uses less chemicals than other treatments. If heat treatment doesn’t work, then the next step is a chemical treatment.
'This type of pest is highly resilient and has the ability to survive for up to a year without feeding. Insecticide applications alone are not effective against bed bugs since bed bug eggs are waterproof.
'You would need to wait for the eggs to hatch into the nymphal stage before any insecticide will successfully take effect,' Daniel says.
'Effective treatment involves a combination of insecticides and heat treatment. Heat treatment eradicates all stages of bed bugs, including eggs, nymphs, and adults, by treating affected items above 60 degrees. Insecticide spray should be applied to all floors and wall-to-floor junctions, and the process should be repeated over several weeks.'
‘Calling in the professionals is what we should have done straight away,’ says Kirstie. ‘The delay meant we had to have our house heat treated three times along with insecticide treatments in areas where the heat might not penetrate. It was really expensive and really stressful.
‘As well as the heat and chemical treatments, the professionals explained to us how to hot wash, freeze and properly store our belongings so that we could eradicate the bed bugs once and for all. We bought dozens of clear ziplock bags and washed or froze everything the bed bugs could live on.
'For a while we had most of our belongings stored in air tight bags and just used a few essentials to cut down on the amount of washing and risk of spreading the bed bugs.’
There are further precautions that you can take to reduce the risk of bed bugs returning. Diatomaceous earth (available from garden centres or online) can be used to make sure your home is free of bugs.
Diatomaceous earth kills bed bugs by breaking down their outer shell so that they die of dehydration. It takes seven to 17 days for the diatomaceous earth to take full effect.
Sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the edges of your rooms and around the base of any furniture and leave it there. It’s a good idea to wear goggles and a mask when you’re putting it down as it’s a fine powder, but it’s harmless once it is in place. Don’t worry if you have pets or young children, it’s safe for them too.
‘Diatomaceous earth was our secret weapon in getting rid of the bed bugs for good,’ says Kirstie. ‘We bought a little gadget from Amazon that you fill with the powder and then puff around the skirting boards, plug sockets, bed legs and entrances to all of the rooms. This way when the bed bugs are on the move they have to crawl over it to get to you and they gradually die off.
'My tip is to keep using the powder for two or three months after you think you’ve got rid of the infestation as you need to make sure any eggs have hatched so that you stop the reproduction cycle.’
If you think you have bed bugs in your home and you want to prevent them from coming back, try to avoid taking any items like clothing, bedding or towels between different rooms. You don’t want to move bed bugs into areas where you’ve managed to eradicate them!
There are other changes you can make in your home to make life difficult for bed bugs, such as swapping your wooden bed frame for a metal one (bed bugs hate metal).
Make sure your clothes are sealed in bags after washing them and store them in drawers or closets, not under the bed. To prevent bed bugs in the future, it’s a good idea to minimise clutter in your home as it provides hiding places for the bugs.
Why are bed bugs so hard to get rid of?
Bed bugs are notoriously difficult to get rid of and Daniel says that they’re becoming resistant to existing treatment methods: 'Bed bugs can be hard to eradicate mainly due to their small size and their transparency during the nymphal stage, which makes them hard to see with the naked eye.
'Not only this, but bedbugs are proven to be getting stronger with thicker skin year after year, giving them more ability to fight against pesticides.
'They often go unnoticed, until somebody realises that they have been bitten, by which time you could have a serious infestation.'
To successfully eliminate the infestation, you must get rid of every single bed bug. 'This can be very challenging due to their capability to multiply, hide in small gaps within your home, and their ability to survive for long periods without human blood,' Daniel says. 'Female bed bugs are also constantly reproducing, so even one bug can quickly turn into hundreds in your home.'
Even after you think you’ve destroyed all of the bed bugs in your home it’s important to remain vigilant. When temperatures drop, bed bugs can go into a hibernation state and can survive without food for months, only waking up when the weather starts to get warmer again. Nymphs (young bed bugs) can live for up to three months without a meal.
How to get rid of bed bugs fast
It’s important to take precautions to keep your home free from bed bugs when you go on vacation, but if you stay vigilant you can protect your house from an infestation.
If you do find signs of bed bugs in your house, it’s important to get professional help as soon as you can to stop the infestation taking hold.
Once your house has been thoroughly treated, stay vigilant in case they return!
Enjoy the summer with al fresco dining
If you’re not going away this summer, you can make the most of the sunshine with an outdoor gathering of friends and family.
Entertain in style with our al fresco dining ideas.
