April 21, 2005
The Hotel Industry Begins to Wake Up To a Bedbug Problem
With Pesticides Out of Favor, Critters Show Up More;
A 1920s Cure: Gasoline
By AVERY JOHNSON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
John Schulz, Marriott International's director of quality control, had
something to discuss last November at one of the hotel industry's
biggest conventions -- something that really makes people squirm.
At the International Hotel/Motel and Restaurant trade show in New York,
Mr. Schulz spoke at a symposium called "Stop the Spread of Bedbugs."
The pamphlet advertising the event, printed by pest-control company
Ecolab, promised a discussion of "the reasons behind the resurgence of
these unwelcome pests."
Mr. Schulz declined to comment on his presentation, and Marriott said
it doesn't have a bedbug problem. But people in the hotel industry are
waking up to the fact that they are playing host to some particularly
nasty guests. In the past few years, Cimex lectularius -- the common
bedbug -- has been making a small but alarming comeback, in part
because some of the pesticides that had kept them at bay have been
phased out.
Hotels are particularly vulnerable to infestations because the bugs
travel in luggage and clothing and because hotels have so many
different people sleeping in their beds.
A survey of insect-control companies in 2004 by Pest Control Technology
magazine found that hotels accounted for the biggest proportion of all
reported bedbug infestations. Respondents said 37% of bedbug calls came
from hotels and motels. That was up from 31% the year before. Orkin
Inc., the pest-control company, reports a substantial increase in its
bedbug calls in the past year.
Bedbugs nest on or near mattresses and feed at night by biting and
sucking the blood of people as they sleep. They can cause itchy red
welts and considerable, lingering anxiety. They're nearly impossible to
get rid of without treating bedding and furniture with powerful
pesticides. (Throwing everything away works, too.) The good news is
that bedbugs are not known to transmit diseases.
The comeback of the bedbug is turning into a legal and public-relations
headache for the hotel industry. In recent weeks, a Florida couple said
they were bitten by bedbugs on a Royal Caribbean International cruise
ship off Fort Lauderdale, Fla., according to their lawyer, Terry M.
Rosenblum.
Royal Caribbean says it refunded them $2,800 for their cruise, paid for
hotels in Puerto Rico, and flew the couple back home. In a statement,
the company says, "Our laundry process cleans all bedding at 155
degrees, a recognized practice that prevents such occurrences as
'bedbugs.' " The company says that "in this case, it appears that the
bugs were brought onboard by a previous guest and were found in areas
other than the bed." It says the bugs have been eradicated.
Still, some travelers are worried. "We've had 20 to 25 calls a day"
from concerned customers, says Jai George of cruisenetwork.com, a
Raleigh, N.C., cruise specialist.
Charles Kelley, a physician and an executive at Outrigger Enterprises,
Inc., which owns or manages 46 hotels in Hawaii, the South Pacific and
Australia, is one of the rare hoteliers willing to discuss the bedbug
issue openly. He keeps a jar of dead bedbugs on a shelf in his office.
He uses it to train staff about what the critters look like. He says
companies can avert lawsuits by being forthright with guests. But, he
says, "No hotel chain wants to talk about this."
Last month, a family of three filed suit against a Days Inn in Ottawa.
Their suit, in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, alleges that in
July 2003, they awoke at 5:30 a.m. to find dozens of bedbugs walking on
the sheets. Since then, they have been "unable to participate in
recreational and social activities to the extent to which they
participated in such activities prior to the incident," according to
the complaint. They have also incurred fumigation and other expenses,
it says.
David Young, a lawyer for the hotel, says the hotel had no previous
complaints. He says he can't comment further while his investigation is
continuing.
In February, two North Carolina women filed suit in Durham County
Superior Court against Days Inn and one of its franchisees for renting
them an infested room a year earlier in Durham, N.C. When the pair went
to the front desk to complain, the suit alleges, the clerk "became very
agitated, picked up a pen, pointed the pen at them in a threatening
fashion and told them to either take another room or get out." They are
asking for damages of more than $10,000 each, plus expenses.
A lawyer for the firm representing the franchisee, C. Scott Holmes,
says he can't comment at this early stage. Days Inn, a unit of Cendant
Corp., declined to comment.
Some people say the bedbug claims are being blown out of proportion,
partly by unscrupulous litigants. Thomas Jones, an associate professor
at the University of Nevada Las Vegas's hotel school, says bedbug
claims are among the top frauds perpetrated against hotels.
As recently as the early 20th century, the tools to fight bedbugs were
crude but effective. One anti-bedbug guide from the 1920s advises
treating infested mattresses with "high-test gasoline." A 1935 guide
prescribed powdered calcium cyanide.
Bedbugs truly met their match when DDT became a household item in the
late 1940s. But DDT was banned in 1972. The Environmental Protection
Agency phased out two organophosphates that were favorite bedbug
killers in recent years, because of their potential danger to humans.
And a lot of people, these days, are uncomfortable with using
pesticides at all, particularly in the beds they sleep in.
The EPA says that 673 pesticides are registered and still available to
treat bedbugs. But Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of
Kentucky, says they're less effective than pesticides of old.
Dr. Potter, who maintains a collection of historical material about
bedbugs, says one of the first references to the critters in literature
was in "The Clouds," by Aristophanes in 423 B.C.
When Socrates tells Strepsiades to move a couch into the room,
Strepsiades responds: "But the bugs will not allow me to bring it." At
one point, Strepsiades says the bugs are poking him in the posterior.
Their resurgence today startles even bug experts. Gary Bennett, a
professor of urban entomology at Purdue University, has studied insects
for 50 years and says he hadn't seen a case of bedbugs until recently.
He didn't think they existed in significant numbers but became a
believer last year when one of his students was bitten in a hotel in
Salt Lake City. "You know infestations are on the rise when someone in
the entomology department gets bedbugs," Dr. Bennett says.
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