Highly resistant bedbugs threaten London hotels

London hotels could be facing a bedbug epidemic after experts warned of a highly resistant strain of the insects in the South-East.

Hotels have been warned to be extra vigilant as travellers carry the blood-sucking insects back from trips abroad.

Pest controllers have told the Evening Standard that numbers are on the up and they are becoming increasingly difficult to kill with chemicals.

“Bedbugs are very difficult to kill. Shop-bought products do not work. Bedbugs have resistance and can mutate. If they are subjected to non-lethal doses it can make them much harder to deal with.”

Hotels are traditionally hotbeds of the parasite because of the numbers of people passing through.

Bedbugs hide out in soft furnishings and skirting boards, emerging at night to feed on unwitting bed occupants. Sometimes they secrete themselves in clothes or take up residence in a dark suitcase, and then they happily travel onwards to emerge in the next place that suitcase lands. It doesn't matter how clean the bed or room is.

Their presence can be an expensive problem for hoteliers. In 2007Â a US lawyer filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London following a stay when he and his wife were badly bitten.

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