After the stress and strain of Christmas and New Year, some people love nothing better than just packing their bags and heading off to their favourite hotel, guest house or even health spa for a relaxing weekend getaway. However with many hotels, bed and breakfasts and guest houses having such a quick turn round between busy times of the year some may find that one or two of their guests may not be of the human type!

One guest that no hotel owner wants to find in their establishment is the flat reddy brown body of a bed bug. These pests have, in recent years reached epidemic proportions in many countries causing companies such as 'Trip Advisor' to regularly reveal information and even photos confirming the presence of bed bugs in numerous hotels. These photos of your hotel can have drastic consequences to your business. Since the bed bugs can arrive on the clothing or even in the suitcases of guests from infested homes or other hotels harbouring the pests, your hotel can be an easy target for any bed bug infestation.

Bed bugs primary food is blood which they will take from your face, neck, hands, and arms often leaving you with a small raised red itchy spot. These spots will come infected if they are scratched with a dirty finger nail. In recent times some hotel guests have even taken out lawsuits against the hotel, as they awoke to find hundreds of bed bug bites covering their bodies.

As a hotel, guest house or B & B owner, you have a duty to protect the health and safety of all your guests, not only from the obvious slip, trip and fall hazards or mandatory door signs but also the unseen pests that lurk within your bedrooms.