This article, by Bruce Watson, shows just how expensive it is to get rid of bed bugs. Some of the noteable costs:
This mental health component goes a long way toward explaining why bedbug infestations can be so expensive. The costs of July’s Hollister, Abercrombie and Victoria’s Secret infestations have yet to be tallied, but previous bedbug-related legal cases have led to massive payouts. In 2003, Burl and Desiree Mathias successfully sued the Motel 6 chain for physical and emotional damages resulting from bedbug bites: A jury awarded them $382,000. The following year, Leona Helmsley’s Park Lane hotel paid a $150,000 settlement to two customers who claimed that bedbugs at the hotel had attacked them, then infested their home. And in 2007, the ultimate bedbug lawsuit came from opera singer Alison Trainer, who claimed that an attack in the Phoenix Hilton Suites had left her unable to sleep in a bed and had caused her to lose weight. She asked for $6 million.Also:
To properly address an infestation, a hotel must call in an exterminator to apply extreme heat or pesticides to the room, as well as to adjacent rooms. The exterminator has to unscrew electric plug covers, spray behind baseboards, remove artwork, and generally turn the room upside down. The bedding and towels must be bagged and removed, while the mattress and box spring have to be thrown away. Carpeting and furniture might need to be disposed of as well and, in most cases, the exterminator will have to return at least once to repeat the entire process.The cost of treating a single hotel room is estimated at $6,000 to $7,000. The problem is even worse if a customer alerted the hotel to the problem: Given the danger of a bedbug stigma, hotels often go to extremes to ensure that customers are pleased with their attentiveness. According to an article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, one Las Vegas hotel’s standard procedure for bedbug complaints is to move customers to new rooms, dry clean all their clothes, and replace their luggage with new, uninfested bags.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/gD9dIc
One thing the article doesn’t mention is that by regularly doing pro-active checks by using bed bug sniffings dogs, the cost of dealing with bed bugs can be significantly be reduced. Once, one hotel room gets these bugs, they will quickley spread. If you can reduce the number of rooms treated,
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