A huge part of our job is education, so that ideally pests can be avoided. To this end, we have developed a list of travel tips we give our customers for reducing their chances of bringing bedbugs home while traveling. We decided to share part of this list with the general public as part of our community education program.

Bedbug Travel Tips:

1. Know what you are looking for before you leave for your trip. Look at various pictures, read descriptions, and have a general feel for what bedbugs, cast skins, and fecal stains look like. Know where you need to be looking for these signs. Simply pulling the topsheet off a hotel mattress, unless the room is exceptionally infested, will not let you know if they are there or not.

2. When checking into a hotel, it never hurts to ask if the property has had problems with bedbugs. It lets the hotel staff know that YOU know about bedbugs. If they know they have an infested room, or even just suspect it, they will be far less likely to put you into one of those rooms.

3. Check behind the headboard when you get into your room. You can use a small flashlight and a compact makeup mirror to see back into tight spaces.

4. Don't be afraid to pull the sheets and bed covers off of the mattress and box springs. Especially at the corners and along seams, look for bugs, cast skins, blood spots, or fecals stains.

5. NEVER put your clothes into a hotel dresser. This greatly increases the chance for transferring either live bugs, or even just their eggs back home with you in the folds of your clothes.

6. Do not set your luggage down on the bed, or on the floor right next to the bed, especially overnight.

7. Once you return home, probably the best thing you can do is take all your clothes (and the luggage too, if it is something like a canvas duffell bag) and put all of them (even "clean" clothes you didn't wear on the trip) into your dryer on the highest heat setting the fabric in the clothes can handle for roughly 20 minutes past the point that they are dry.

This is by no means a complete list. It may NOT prevent you from getting an infestation, but it will certainly reduce your chances. If you travel extensively, or are in a high risk group for getting bedbugs (pilots, sales, hotel management, work in public or multi-family housing, in-home care giver etc.) we would be happy to work with you on an comprehensive set of guidlines to follow to keep your chances of bringing bedbugs home with you as low as is possible. We can also arrange for regular inspections by one of our Bedbug Detection Canine teams to give you peace of mind that you haven't brought bedbugs home with you. Simply contact us for more information.