At Boston hotels, it's dog vs. bedbug

[Guest guest]

At hotels, it's dog vs. bedbug

Canine patrols make sure guests won't get the itch to complain

By C. Wong Globe Staff / January 3, 2008

In the 3 1/2 years it's been open, Jurys Boston Hotel has never found

bedbugs on its premises, nor have its guests complained about being

bitten. Still, the luxury hotel in the Back Bay began dispatching a

bedbug-sniffing dog to each of its 225 guest rooms last year.

And when the canine detective barked, after detecting the suspicious

scent of the itch-inducing insects or their eggs, the hotel fumigated

two rooms and burned the mattresses.

" At the first sign or suggestion of a problem, our reaction would be

to treat the room with chemicals, no questions asked, " said general

manager ston, who calls the dog in every three months.

Hotels are intensifying their efforts to quash the wingless insects,

which were nearly eradicated in the United States a half-century ago

but are again becoming a nuisance.

Scientists aren't sure why bedbugs - which hitchhike to new homes on

luggage and clothing - have been resurging, but they suspect the

proliferation of international travel and the dwindling potency of

insecticides.

Bedbugs don't signal unsanitary living conditions or transmit

diseases, but hotels don't want to be bitten by bad publicity when

upset guests vent on blogs or online social networks.

Reliable data are hard to find, since public agencies aren't notified

about infestations. But the exterminator Orkin Inc. said it treated

buildings for bedbugs in 48 states in 2005, up from 43 states in 2004

and 35 states in 2003.

Orkin's branch serving hotels and other nonresidential buildings in

Greater Boston reported that it sprayed, steamed, and vacuumed bedbugs

25 percent more per month in 2007 than in 2006, on average.

Still, the American Hotel & Lodging Association estimates the

percentage of guests who encounter bedbugs is minuscule, given that 4

million people sleep in lodging establishments nightly.

The association's chief executive, Joe McInerney, said he doesn't

believe the insects - which can thrive for a year between one-bite

meals on the blood of living hosts - were almost wiped out when the

pesticide DDT was widely used after World War II.

" You always had it, but nobody reported it, " said McInerney, who has

worked in the lodging industry for more than 45 years.

Now, the word about bedbugs gets out in other ways.

According to an online survey of 1,052 travelers in the United States

that Acromatics conducted for Orkin in April, half said they would

gripe about being bitten to at least five people. It's also easy to

complain to a large audience through websites like TripAdvisor.com,

where customers can post reviews about hotels and motels.

But some travelers don't stop at complaining - they sue. That's what

and Lori McLelland of Ringewood, N.J., did after allegedly

suffering bedbug bites during a two-night stay at the Boston Park

Plaza Hotel & Towers in October. The Park Plaza did not respond to

repeated requests for a comment.

Jurys isn't the only hotel to take a proactive approach to bedbugs.

The Omni House brings in an insect-sniffing mixed Labrador from

Advanced K9 Detectives LLC, the same Milford, Conn., firm that Jurys

and about 10 other Boston-area hotels use. The Omni's general manager,

Murtha, is also considering buying special encasements for

mattresses and box springs to prevent bedbugs from building homes on them.

Scientists are trying to find ways to fight the bugs, too. The

Entomological Society of America's annual conference, held in San

Diego last month, featured three half-day symposiums on the insects,

with nearly 30 scientific presentations on topics like " How bedbugs

survive long xeric periods between blood meals " and " The effect of

sex-ratio on dispersal and aggregation behavior of the common bedbug. "

Three years ago, no one at the conference presented any bedbug research.

It's a significant shift, said , an entomologist and

technical director of Pest Solutions, because " if you

understand everything about what makes an organism tick, that enables

you to look for links in its lifecycle and behavior that can be attacked. "

Judith Black, technical director at Steritech Group Inc., a

pest-control company that serves the hospitality industry, found only

0.6 percent of the almost 76,000 rooms the company inspected between

November 2002 and April 2006 needed to be treated for bedbugs, but

those infestations were spread across 24.4 percent of the nearly 700

US hotels it studied.

" The unfortunate thing is today we don't have a baited trap for

bedbugs, " said Pollack, a medical entomologist at Harvard

University's School of Public Health. He's researching how bedbugs

find their hosts.

For the past year, Pollack has let hundreds of laboratory bedbugs chow

down on his arm to keep his research specimen thriving - and to cut

the time, money, and paperwork required to feed them animal blood

through an artificial membrane.

So he knows firsthand that, contrary to rumor and imagination, you

can't feel the creepy crawlers bite. Which is good, he said, since for

now " you are the best attractant. "

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2008/01/03/at_hotels_its_dog_vs_be\

dbug/