NATIONAL REPORT—It’s safe to say we can all agree that online reviews have a significant impact on businesses, especially in the hospitality industry. Guests and past guests, regardless of their experiences, now have an unfiltered forum to act as a voice of authority on your property.
There is tremendous power and opportunity here, if the experience is a positive one. However, when an encounter with bed bugs is in the mix, negative reviews are sure to bite you, pun intended.
Your online reputation matters, and bed bugs may be your worst enemy.
According to the University of Kentucky, victims of bed bug infestations are extremely likely to take to the Internet—Trip Advisor, Travelocity and Bed Bug Registry—to describe their bed bug experience resulting in physical distress, sleeplessness, nervousness, anxiety and an extreme disruption in their life. These words are costly.
This same University of Kentucky study found that just one negative report of bed bugs on a travelers’ online review site can cost a 300-room hotel catering to business travelers $274,000 per month in revenue. When looking at a similarly sized hotel catering to vacation travelers, the costs approached $166,000 per month.
When evaluating the cost of a bed bug incident, many hoteliers fail to add it all up, literally counting only the fee for remediation. But you can’t forget the power of digital and social media and their impact on your bottom line. It’s real. And, it’s significant!
So, what can a hotelier do?
While it is impossible to stop the introduction of bed bugs, you can significantly lessen the impact of a bed bug entering your hotel by adopting a preventative strategy, including active mattress liners.
ActiveGuard Mattress Liners go on like a fitted sheet and can save time, money and energy, and prevent an incident from becoming an infestation. Sophisticated hoteliers recognize that bed bugs may be difficult to detect at an early stage, and are skilled hitchhikers that can easily gain access to the bed. Having an active liner in place that starts working within 10 minutes of contact can assist in saving a room from developing a full-blown bed bug infestation.
We invite you to take our survey to share your thoughts on the true cost of beds bugs in hotels. We look forward to sharing the results with the industry. To learn more on how you can enjoy all the benefits of bed bug prevention in hotels, sign up for a free one-on-one webinar.
About Allergy Technologies
ActiveGuard Mattress Liners kill bed bugs. Easily installed on mattresses or box springs, these liners offer two-year continual prevention and control against any adult bed bugs, nymphs or eggs. ActiveGuard has no cautionary signal words or use restrictions on its label. Only four sizes—single/twin, double/full, queen and king—fit almost every available mattress or box spring and accommodate up to extra-large in length and 17-in. in depth. Underlying is ActiveGuard’s formulation; a unique and proprietary delivery system that offers sustained bioavailability of permethrin for two years. Newest research supports that after a short exposure to ActiveGuard of only 10 minutes, bed bugs regardless of their level of resistance, begin to show significant reductions in feeding (biting) and a dramatic inability to lay eggs. This results in discontinuation of population growth thereby halting progression of an incident to an infestation. If you are seeking a pro-active preventative approach, ActiveGuard should be considered as the centerpiece of your long-term solution to keep bedding from being infested. ActiveGuard Mattress Liners are covered under U.S. Patents 5,916,580, 6,214,365, 6,440,438 and pending patents.
For more tips on preventing bed bugs and uncovering infestations early visit us online at www.hotelbedbugprevention.com.
