This New York Times article references a case of bed bugs at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City — but that’s not the story. Bed bugs can be present in any hotel, any time. They arrive and depart with all kinds of people, after all.
The issue here is that while the hotel apparently responded promptly to a guest’s complaint about bed bugs, a member of the housekeeping staff claims that in this instance, she was not notified of the problem promptly.
As the NY Times reports,
The worker, Rosanna Polanco, a room attendant, said she was asked on Monday to service the room next to 1005 but was not told about the bedbugs. She found out only when she encountered a worker from Ecolab Inc., a company that supplies cleaning products and pest elimination services.
“He was the one who told me: ‘Be careful. There’s a lot of bedbugs in there,’ ” Ms. Polanco said, referring to Room 1005. “Management didn’t tell me. I found out myself.”
“A lot of bedbugs” does not sound good.
I can almost hear the sound of hundreds of pest control firm reps running for their phones to call the hotel and pitch their monitoring and prevention programs, and I predict that within two weeks, we see an article about how a canine team has inspected the building and given the all clear.
The good news is that a few days later, the hotel workers were given training on how to recognize signs of bed bugs, as all hospitality staff everywhere should be, in my opinion.
The article also notes the hotel also apologized for the delay in notifying workers, and offered to have Ms. Polanco’s home inspected for bed bugs. If it were me, I would take them up on the offer.
