Tim Hubbard walks through bed bug risks in Airbnbs: they hitchhike in on luggage, guests spot them through bites or sightings, and prevention means keeping units clean and clutter-free. He's had one confirmed case and says prompt action with a pest inspector matters more than panic.
Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick, actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Welcome back, everyone, to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Happier here again as always. Today we have a interesting little topic for you. Rhymes with schmed.
And maybe you can guess it. Maybe you've encountered these in one of your short term rentals. Hopefully not, but the longer we're in this industry, the longer we're in the hospitality industry. At some point you're probably going to come across them. We're talking about bed bugs today, so we'll just dive right in. Where do they come from? How do you get rid of them? A couple encounters I've had and I'll give you a couple little tips there. So let's get right in. You may know that they come from traveling, or at least we associate them with traveling, that they latch onto suitcases. That's probably the most common area. They're like the, the hitchhiker of the insect world or the bug world. You know, they really, they, they travel. They're not very common. First off, I gotta say, as long as you're keeping your place clean, these aren't very common. I've had thousands of reservations and I've had one confirmed case of bedbugs, which we handled very quickly. So I will fill you in on that here in a quick minute. But first of all, most time they come from suitcases, but they can be in all types of areas. I mean, they can be in office places, they can be in subways, they can be in the hospitality industry, apartments, single family homes, you name it. I mean, if your place isn't clean, you can get them there. If people have been traveling through there. In one of our prior episodes, I mentioned the use of a luggage rack, a luggage stand, and having it in every bedroom. It's an easy little thing to have or an extra step to take. An easy step to take to prevent bed bugs. So they come from people traveling and most of the time we find them on beds. That's why they call them bed bugs. So they get in like on the bed frame and they're really small, so you can't really see these unless you're looking for them. And the way you're probably going to hear about it is that if a guest says something, they're not actually harmful. They're, they're just a nuisance. They're gross, obviously, and they can irritate your skin. I mean, you can get bumps and all that. And that's how most people find out about them. So we want to eliminate them, we want to get rid of them, we want to protect ourselves, make sure that those do not happen, just reduce clutter. We shouldn't have clutter in our short term rentals anyways. We're always washing all of our linens and everything every time a guest checks out. So our rentals are really clean, so we shouldn't have an issue with these. But we have people traveling through and so that happens. An example for mine, I did have a confirmed case of bedbugs. A guest messaged us and we right away moved her to another unit. And then we sent in a bug person right away as soon as one was available. And he did find some bed bugs in the bed frame. Very, very early cases. So we lucked out, he treated it, we left the place empty for a few days. And that was really. It actually didn't even cost us that much. It was just a few hundred bucks. Some aren't affected actually by bed bugs. So if it bites them, they might not have an irritation, might not even know. So there is a possibility that they could get a little worse and you don't know about it. And if they get too bad, then they start spreading. They can go to multiple units. If you're in a multifamily place or if you're in a hotel, you know, they can go from one floor to the next. And then in that case you gotta, you gotta ring in the Bing guns and you gotta, you gotta fumigate the place, put a tent around it. And that's a huge, huge expense and not convenient for anyone. So the good news is these things like hardly ever happen. You know, a lot of the people I know in the industry that have tons and tons of rentals and been doing it for years, they have very, very few cases. But it's just something to be aware of. Now, you may have a lot of guests that say there were bed bugs in your rental. We've had a number of those, in which case we handle them the same way. You know, if someone's not comfortable, we do whatever. We can move them to another unit or if we don't have another space, then maybe we have to find a hotel for them. And of course we refund them and do all that. And we've had that happen a handful of times where someone said that. So we went through our same process. We called in the bug inspector, or the pest man, whatever you want to call him, and he didn't find anything. And we haven't had any issues since. So some people get alarmed, think that they maybe do have them, but they're not actually really there when we send in the pros. So that's probably going to happen. That's going to pop up with your short term rentals way more than any sort of confirmed case. But it's just good to know about these things. So keep your places clean. You're already doing that. Keep them clutter free. You're already doing that. If something does happen, jump on it as soon as possible and you should be good. Don't worry about it. The awesome revenue that we earn with these short term rentals far outweighs all of these little itty bitty challenges. So until next time, have a wonderful day.
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