How to identify bed bugs in hotel rooms before they hitch a ride home in your luggage and turn your bedroom into a stressful, full-blown infestation nightmare

Nobody wants to think about bed bugs when they are on holiday. You have booked the room, you are tired from travelling, and the bed looks inviting. But spending three minutes checking before you throw your suitcase open could save you weeks of misery, hundreds of pounds in pest control.

Bed bugs don't discriminate travel on luggage, on clothing, on second-hand furniture and once they're in your home, getting rid of them is genuinely one of the more exhausting things you'll deal with.

Start before you even touch the bed

The moment you walk into a hotel room, don't put your bag on the bed or the floor. Put it in the bathroom, on a hard surface, or hang it up.

Now, pull back the bedding. Strip it right back to the mattress. You're looking for a few specific things: small reddish-brown insects about the size of an apple seed, tiny white eggs that look almost like grains of rice, shed skins (they look pale and papery, like empty husks), and small dark or rust-coloured stains on the mattress or sheets. Those stains are bed bug excrement, or crushed bugs.

Run your fingers along the seams and piping of the mattress. That's where they hide during the day, tucked into any tight fold or crevice, away from light. Check both sides if you can lift the mattress. Check the box spring underneath. Check the headboard, especially if it's upholstered or has any cracks or joins where it meets the wall.

Don’t stop at bed mattress

Bed bugs can also be found in the bed frame itself, in the joints and screw holes of wooden furniture nearby, behind the headboard if it's fixed to the wall, inside bedside table drawers, and along the edges of carpet near the bed.

If there's an upholstered chair or sofa in the room, check the seams and underneath the cushions too. Bed bugs will travel from their original hiding spot as populations grow, and in a heavily infested room you might find them further afield than you'd expect. Look for the same signs: staining, shed skins, the bugs themselves.

A torch helps enormously here. Most hotel rooms have decent ambient light, but shining a light directly into seams and corners makes a real difference. The torch on your phone is enough.

What to do if you find them

Tell the front desk immediately and ask to be moved to a different room, not adjacent to or directly above or below the original room, since infestations can spread through walls. It's a completely reasonable request and any reputable hotel will take it seriously. Don't feel awkward about it.

When you move rooms, do the same inspection again. And keep your luggage off the floor throughout your stay, wherever you end up.

Even if your room was clean, it's worth being careful when you get home. Unpack your suitcase outside or in a garage if you can, rather than in your bedroom. Put clothes straight into a hot wash. For anything that can't be washed, a tumble dryer on high heat for 30 minutes works just as well.

Don't leave your empty suitcase on the bedroom floor. Store it somewhere away from sleeping areas, or seal it in a large plastic bag.

Bed bugs are genuinely hard to eradicate once they're established in a home. The bites can take weeks to clear up, and some people have significant reactions to them.

None of that is meant to make every hotel stay feel like a biohazard situation. The vast majority of rooms you'll ever sleep in will be fine. But the check takes minutes and the peace of mind is worth it.