How to Avoid Bringing Bed Bugs Home From Your Holiday

Bed bug reports in London have increased significantly over the past three years, and travel is one of the primary routes of introduction. Unlike most household pests, bed bugs don’t come in through gaps in walls or drains — they hitch rides on luggage, clothing, and second-hand furniture.

If you’ve recently returned from a hotel stay — particularly in urban centres in Europe or the Americas — and you’ve started waking up with unexplained bites, bed bugs are worth investigating.

What Are Bed Bugs?

Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are small, flat, reddish-brown insects about 4–5mm long when fully grown — roughly the size of an apple seed. They feed exclusively on blood, typically at night while their host is sleeping.

They don’t live on the body like lice. Instead, they hide in tight spaces close to where people sleep: mattress seams, bed frames, headboards, skirting boards, and behind electrical sockets. In heavy infestations they’ll be found in furniture, behind picture frames, and even inside electronics.

How to Check Your Hotel Room

This takes 3 minutes and can save you weeks of stress:

1. Leave your luggage in the bathroom when you first arrive — bed bugs are almost never found on hard, non-porous bathroom surfaces. Don’t put bags on the bed or floor yet.

2. Pull back the bedding and inspect the mattress, particularly:

   • Along the seams (top and bottom)
   • Around the edges where the mattress meets the frame
   • The headboard — check behind it if it’s fixed to the wall

3. Look for: live insects (difficult to spot, they move fast), shed skins (translucent, bug-shaped husks), or dark spotting (digested blood, appears as small dark dots or smears).

4. Check the bed frame and base — particularly joints and screw holes.

If you find anything suspicious, ask to change rooms immediately — and ideally to a different floor (bed bugs can migrate through wall voids between adjacent rooms).

When You Get Home

Even if you didn’t see anything in the hotel, take precautions:

Unpack in the garage or hallway, not the bedroom. Treat your luggage as potentially contaminated until it’s been checked and items washed.

Wash all clothing at 60°C (or tumble dry on high for 30 minutes if items can’t be washed at that temperature). Heat kills all life stages of bed bugs.

Put luggage in large sealed bags and leave in a warm location for a few days, or use a bed bug spray on exterior surfaces of bags. Alternatively, leave bags in direct sunlight on a hot day — the internal temperature needs to reach 45°C for a sustained period.

Inspect your suitcase — particularly the internal seams, pockets, and wheels. Use a torch and a credit card to scrape along seams.

Signs of a Bed Bug Infestation

If you’ve already noticed the following, you may have introduced bed bugs:

• Bites: typically in lines or clusters of 3 (“breakfast, lunch, dinner” pattern), on exposed skin. Note that many people don’t react to bed bug bites at all, so absence of bites doesn’t rule out infestation.
• Dark spotting: small dark dots on mattress seams, bedding, or skirting boards
• A sweet, musty smell: large infestations produce a distinctive unpleasant odour
• Shed skins or eggs: tiny (1mm), white eggs and translucent shed skins in crevices

Act Fast

Bed bug infestations don’t resolve themselves. A single mated female can produce 200–500 eggs over her lifetime. An early-stage infestation of a dozen insects can become a serious problem within weeks.

The sooner treatment begins, the less disruptive and costly it is. Early-stage infestations in a single room can sometimes be resolved in 2 visits. Established infestations across multiple rooms require 3 or more visits and potentially heat treatment.

Professional Bed Bug Treatment

DIY bed bug treatments — mattress sprays, powders, foggers — have a poor track record. They typically kill surface insects but don’t reach hidden populations in walls, electrical outlets, and furniture voids.

Professional treatment uses:

• Residual insecticide sprays applied to all harborage points
• Steam treatment for mattresses and upholstered furniture
• Heat treatment (whole-room) for severe cases — raises room temperature to 56°C+ which kills all life stages including eggs

We carry out professional bed bug treatments across all 33 London boroughs. If you’ve returned from travel and are concerned, request a quote online for advice and same-day or next-day attendance.