What to do when you discover bed bugs in your hotel

3. Handle and treat your luggage properly

This is crucial point. Upon returning home, do not bring your luggage inside but rather keep it in a garage, shed or porch. Visually inspect your luggage first and anything you had with you in the hotel room including your clothing, shoes, toiletries, etc. Check carefully belongings that were placed on the bed or near the bed as they are more likely to have bed bugs.

Take out all the clothing and other washable items and place them in garbage bags to take them to the washing machine. Wash your stuff at a high temperature for at least 30 min. Then, place your clothes in the dryer on the hot setting for 30 min. High temperature will kill bed bugs as well as their eggs.  Remember to wash the suitcases, shoes, toiletry in warm water with soup as well.

Alternatively, these items can be treated with cold temperature by leaving them outside for a long period (if you have cold winters). You can also treat your stuff with cold by placing them in your freezer for 1-2 days.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, after we encountered bed bugs in our hotel room during our family holiday, we were very stressed out and afraid of bringing those pests to our home.

Luckily, the steps described above, although are quite a hassle, they helped us to avoid running into a bigger problem that is bringing bed bugs into our home.