Sales & Marketing November 8, 2007, 6:16PM EST

The Cost of Bedbugs

Hotels and rental housing are hit by a resurgence in bedbug infestation—and lawsuits are proving it's not a problem that can be swept under the rug

by Kerry Miller

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Pest control companies say bedbug infestations have escalated dramatically over the past decade. ORKIN PEST CONTROL SERVICES

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There are proactive steps property owners can take, such as installing bedbug-proof mattress covers, that can help create an "inhospitable environment" for the critters, making them easier to detect and contain quickly. COOPER PEST SOLUTIONS

Rosemary Salinas is a property supervisor for five apartment buildings in San Francisco. The first time she saw a bedbug was in 2004, when one of the tenants in a trendy Marina District building complained about itchy bites from tiny bugs that looked like ticks. Salinas hired a pest control company to treat the unit, the tenant moved out, and that was that—or so she thought.

Only months later did she find out that the primary infestation was actually in the apartment next door and that the bedbugs had spread into the walls, the hallways, and four other apartments in the 28-unit building. Salinas estimates the cleanup cost upwards of $40,000 all told, including a $9,000 payout to one tenant who threatened to sue.

"It was a nightmare," she says. And it's an increasingly common one. Although the bloodsucking parasites all but disappeared from the U.S. in the 1950s, thanks largely to the now-banned pesticide DDT, pest control companies say bedbug infestations have escalated dramatically over the past decade. Pest control professionals say they've found bedbugs in hospital waiting rooms, movie theaters, schools, on public buses, airplanes, and ships. So far, hotels, nursing homes, and apartment buildings have been among the businesses hardest hit by the nationwide bedbug resurgence.

Bedbugs are more of a nuisance than a health risk. While everyone shudders at the thought of bloodsucking parasites feeding on them at night, bedbugs don't carry any known diseases, and some people don't even react to bedbug bites at all. But because the pests are difficult to get rid of, an infestation can exact a real toll.

Not a Sanitation Issue

Salinas now issues regular notices in every building she supervises reminding tenants to call management immediately if they suspect a bedbug infestation. Still, the property owners she has talked to haven't been eager to do the same. "They don't want anybody to suspect that they have them, or to think that they could have them," she says.

Rental property owners aren't the only ones with that attitude. In a statement on its Web site, the American Hotel & Lodging Assn.—an industry group that co-hosted an international bedbug symposium last fall—says the resurgence of bedbugs in the U.S. has "had a minimal impact on the vast majority of hotels, which maintain state-of-the-art sanitation and adhere to strict standards of cleanliness," adding, for good measure: "Bedbugs are brought into hotels by guests; it is not a hotel sanitation issue."

It's true that bedbugs aren't a hygiene or sanitation issue, per se. Unlike roaches or rats, bedbugs thrive even in the cleanest five-star hotels. But the AHLA's definition of "minimal impact" is open to interpretation. A study by the Steritech Group, a commercial and institutional pest management company, found that nearly 25% of the 700 hotels it tracked over a three-and-a-half year period between November, 2002, and April, 2006, required treatment for bedbugs, though of the 76,000 hotel rooms in the study, fewer than 1% were found to be infested. But the public stigma that bedbugs carry makes the line between discretion and transparency a delicate one to tread.

"The hotel industry, property managers, universities—nobody wants to talk about bedbugs," says Michael Potter, a University of Kentucky entomologist and bedbug authority. But some have been taking steps to address the problem quietly.

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