Tag Archives: Bed Bugs
Infographic: How to Detect Bed Bugs
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Guest Issues, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Training
Couple From CA Describes Bedbugs ‘Nightmare’ at NYC Hotel
A couple from California thought they were on a dream vacation to New York City, but they found a massive bedbug infestation under the mattress at the Astor on the Park Hotel on the Upper West Side.
Now, they’re speaking out only to Eyewitness News.
The trip was a gift from Elgin Ozlen’s mother, and the couple was supposed to take in the sights and sounds of the city, and see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. However, because of the bedbugs, Ozlen says it will be a trip that he and his girlfriend will remember for all the wrong reasons.
“We were expecting a vacation to remember the rest of our lives, and we will definitely remember it for the rest of our lives, but it won’t be a pleasant memory,” says Ozlen.
After staying in a hotel room infested with bedbugs, the dream vacation immediately turned into a nightmare.
Ozlen says he shot video of the infestation, while staying at Astor on the Park on Central Park West. The couple arrived on Wednesday, and by Thursday, there was an infestation of bedbugs where Ozlen’s girlfriend slept. Ozlen then goes on to say that the room was the third room the couple had been in, after the first two did not have heaters.
The California man says they had planned to be in Times Square to see the ball drop, but that never happened. Also, on New Year’s Day, his birthday, they had tickets to see the Rockettes, but instead there was a change of plans.
“On my birthday, I’m in the hospital, and I’m washing the best clothes that I brought that I own for this vacation, and during that process many of the clothes became damaged, because they’re not meant to be dried,” Ozlen says.
It cost hundreds of dollars to have the couple’s belongings cleaned. Meanwhile Ozlen says his girlfriend’s body is still inflamed, saying she is furious that the bites and scratches may lead to permanent scarring.
He also says she can’t eat because she is nauseous, but she is not the only one.
“It’s disgusting. I don’t really feel like sleeping here,” said one hotel guest.
Katie Phillips, a tourist from Australia has been staying at Astor on the Park for a week, and says her stay has been ‘near perfect’ – a clean room with no complaints. After seeing the bedbugs video, she says it was ‘pretty disturbing’.
For more:Â http://abc13.co/21019nM
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Hospitality Industry Risk Update: “5 Ways to Pummel Pests at Your Hotel”
“(Hoteliers) really should have an independent inspection of their vendors,†Rivard said. “The prime food producers throughout the country already do that. They’re checking them out,
whether they’re buying some ingredient or working with a pallet manufacturer.â€
A hidden danger of record high demand is more guests walking through the door means a higher chance anything from bed bugs to cockroaches to rats and ants are following right behind.
One of the few things more disconcerting than the pests themselves is the effect they can have on your bottom line.
A recent survey conducted by researchers at the University of Kentucky showed a single online review mentioning a bed bug sighting caused many to immediately write off a hotel. The first reaction of 56% of potential guests will be to no longer consider staying at that property, 7% will shorten their stay and 12% will seek to avoid that hotel’s brand in the future.
The same survey, results of which have not yet been published, showed 60% of guests who spot a bed bug would immediately leave the hotel, which is almost three times as many as those who would leave after finding someone else’s blood somewhere in a guest room.
“It’s a maddeningly difficult problem to deal with,†said Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the authors of the study. “Everybody is dealing with bed bugs … but hospitality is especially vulnerable because people rely so much on social media when making decisions.â€
The potential damage to your hotel’s reputation is only worsened when considering the fact that less than a third of those surveyed could identify successfully a bed bug, with many confusing other pests like lice, ants, termites and ticks for bed bugs.
The harsh reality is there are no 100% infallible methods to keep pests from darkening your doorways, but there are some things to make sure they’re less welcome after arrival.
Here are five ways experts seek to prevent pests.
For more:Â http://bit.ly/1gmpxiM
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Claims, Guest Issues, Health, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Insurance, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
Hospitality Industry Risk Management Update: “Bedbugs: A Nightmare for the Hotel Industry”
In order to mimic the way bedbug information would be discovered in real life as travelers booked hotels online, Penn explained, the information about bedbugs required a couple extra clicks from the participant.
 They found that bedbugs were at the top of people’s lists of concerns when picking a hotel. Further, if an actual bedbug was found—participants reported it as the number one reason they’d leave the hotel immediately.
In 2010, it seemed all but impossible to escape bedbug infestation and paranoia in New York City. Almost everyone knew someone that had to deal with them; I remember guilt-ridden conversations of how to politely escape social gatherings at the homes of friends who had had them.
That year was the peak of bedbugs in New York. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development reports that infestation cases have been falling since then; last year’s case number—2,268 —is less than half of what it once was.
Nevertheless, bedbugs are still a huge concern for the hospitality industry.  The reason isn’t merely the bugs themselves, but how travelers choose their accommodations these days: online, guided by the reviews of their fellow travelers. And those online reviews can do real damage to a hotel if there is just the slightest hint of a bedbug infestation.
That’s the finding of three researchers—Michael Potter, veteran entomologist, and agricultural economists Jerrod Penn and Wuyang Hu at the University of Kentucky—who teamed up to look at the economic impact of bedbugs for the hotel industry. Their forthcoming report was funded by Protect-A-Bed (a company that makes mattress protectors), and it shows that bedbug reports lowered the value of a hotel room by $21 for leisure travelers and $38 for business travelers.
For more:Â http://theatln.tc/1J4SMxO
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management
Hospitality Industry Conference Update: “2015 Hospitality Law Conference”
The speakers, panelists, roundtable hosts, and facilitators of the 2015 Hospitality Law Conference represent the full spectrum of key roles in the hospitality industry:
Private attorneys, hotel and restaurant corporate counsel, risk managers,finance executives, real estate developers, human resources managers, loss prevention managers, insurance brokers, and hotel and restaurant owners, managers, and operators
Hospitality Insurance and Loss Prevention Summit:Â The Petra Risk Solutions Hospitality Insurance and Loss Prevention Summit converges insurance, risk, LP, legal and finance to break down the silos of these functional areas. As we do each year, we begin with the top claims that have occurred over the last twelve months and the best practices to prevent them from occurring at your hotel or restaurant. As Worker Compensation Claims are becoming more of a challenge for the industry, we will take a deeper dive into best practices for prevention, claims handling and back to work policies.
For more:Â http://bit.ly/1zX3RBh
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Filed under Conferences, Employee Practices, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Here Are The Top 5 Business Risks For 2015”
For businesses, the main cost of a cyber attack involves the impact to their reputation and the resulting financial damages, as well as the loss of customer business. The breaches at Sony, Target, Staples and Home Depot
demonstrated the damage that can be caused to corporate reputations. Seventy-one percent of customers indicated they would leave an organization following a data breach according to the Edelman Privacy Risk Index
The globalization of today’s economy means that businesses are more interconnected than ever, creating a greater risk of business interruption, supply chain disruption, and exposures that can quickly multiply.
According to UNCTAD, over the last 50 years the number of multinational companies has grown exponentially from 7,000 to almost 104,000, and could reach more than 140,000 by 2020.
The Allianz Risk Barometer 2015 surveyed more than 500 risk managers and corporate insurance experts in 47 countries to identify the primary challenges facing businesses this year. Some risks such as political upheaval, cybercrime and business interruption were viewed as a greater risk, while natural catastrophes, technological innovation and market stagnation were viewed as having less of an impact.
Here is a look at the top 5 business risks for 2015 as identified by the Allianz Risk Barometer.
For more:Â http://bit.ly/1unPPlX
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Filed under Claims, Crime, Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Insurance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management
Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Hidden Cameras Reveal How Much (And How Little) Some Hotel Maids Really Clean”
At a Crowne Plaza hotel, the maid collected all the used drinking glasses, put them into the sink, and turned on the water. Then she gathered all the dirty towels from the bathroom floor,
held onto one, and used it to help dry the cups. The Crowne Plaza maid then used the same towel to wipe down the countertop, the toilet and the bathtub. She never used soap on anything, but she did return to spray the room with air freshener.
When you check into a hotel room, you assume the maid has cleaned everything, including changing the sheets and disinfecting the bathroom. But a hidden camera investigation revealed that may not always be the case.
The Rossen Reports team booked rooms for two nights at some of the most popular hotel chains and rigged them with cameras (all three of the hotels were in northeastern New Jersey). In each case they put soda in the glasses, threw towels on the bathroom floors and made the rooms looked used before calling to have housekeeping make them up, as well as prominently displaying the card requesting that all linens be changed.
For more: http://on.today.com/1ur6PcG
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Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Hot-Sheets Bronx Motel Kept Bloody Mattress in Room Years After Customer Died of Overdose on Bed”
“…A room attendant who photographed the soiled mattress in room 230 weeks
before the inspection told an arbitrator it had been in use up until April, 2014…The firm also found that hotel management had failed to properly train staff on how to handle sheets and towels contaminated with human waste and other substances…”
Working in this Bronx motel is a bloody hell.
The owners of a hot-sheet motel where union laborers have been protesting wage and benefits cuts failed to replace a bloody mattress two years after a dead man was found on the bed, workers claim.
Owner Ankoor Naik has also ignored two independent reports that found inadequate training and protection for employees at the 94-unit flophouse despite hazardous conditions and bedbug infestations, workers and safety experts attest.
For more: http://nydn.us/1qL4QQDÂ
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Claims, Employee Practices, Guest Issues, Health, Hotel Industry, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Training
Hospitality Industry Bed Bug Update: “How to Search Your Hotel Room for Bed Bugs”
“…I also found “joke†apps pretending to be bed bug detectors for the purposes of freaking your friends out,
and some highly bogus “ultrasonic repelling†apps that suggest they turn your phone into a sonic threat to bugs of all kinds. There is no evidence that bed bugs or mosquitoes are repelled by ultrasound. Don’t waste your money…”
You’re packed for your trip, your boarding passes are downloaded… and then that little moment of terror hits. What if the hotel you’re going to stay in has bed bugs? It’s a real concern, but by being vigilant, you can reduce your chances of bringing home some unexpected souvenirs.
I don’t put a lot of trust in online hotel bed bug ratings or reports; infestation status can change from day to day, and there is no reliable way to verify that reviews are not fake.
Here’s how I search for bed bugs when I arrive at a new hotel. I can’t promise this is foolproof, but knowing how one slightly-paranoid entomologist deals with the threat of bed bugs might be useful to some readers.
For more:Â http://wrd.cm/1odGOha
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Hotel Industry, Maintenance, Management And Ownership
Hospitality Industry Bed Bug Update: “Suit: Calumet Park Hotel Infested With Bed Bugs”
“…The one-count lawsuit claims the hotel negligently and carelessly failed to provide guests with safe and sanitary rooms; 
failed to take steps, including inspections and extermination, to keep its premises clean and free of infestations; and, among other things, failed to train staff appropriately to recognize signs of bed bugs…”
A woman suffered from bed bug bites after she stayed at a hotel in Calumet Park, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
Bridget Flowers rented a hotel room Feb. 14 at the Magnuson Hotel, 12800 S. Ashland Ave., and slept on the bed and used the sheets that the hotel provided, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Cook County Circuit Court.
For more:Â http://bit.ly/1gWJaOj
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Filed under Bed Bugs, Claims, Guest Issues, Liability, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
