In its first year of operation, Spotta’s Bed Pods have reduced the number of bed bug incidents detected by hotel guests in their clients’ homes from 50% to just 3.3%.
The “always-on” monitoring service uses AI-controlled detection technology to identify insects and provide real-time alerts. The Bed Pod enables hotels, other accommodation providers, and their pest control partners to identify bed bugs and treat the problem early to limit pest damage.
After the first year of real use in customer hotels, in which more than 91,000 overnight stays were carried out, 52.2% of the detections made by Spotta were in rooms without bed bugs in the recent past. This shows the effectiveness of the system as an early warning of new infestations. Repeated detections in rooms helped hoteliers assess whether the extermination treatments were successful or whether they needed further, deeper treatment.
During the twelve-month period, Spotta was the first to identify bed bugs 94.2% of the time, which significantly reduced the number of guest encounters with bed bugs in multi-room properties.
“For lodging providers, most of the financial impact of bed bugs comes from guest-pest contact, resulting in discomfort, poor reviews, and lost revenue,” said Robert Fryers, Spotta’s co-founder and CEO.
“The definition of success for the Bed Pod has always been:” Does it make the owner / operator aware of bed bugs before a guest detects them? “. Our customers had previously had a 50% or less success rate in detection through their existing surveillance methods – meaning 1 in 2 bed bug incidents were reported first by guests. With Spotta we were able to reduce this to just 3.3% that found by guests were. “
Traditional surveillance methods include sniffer dogs, pre-scheduled visits from professional pest controllers / inspectors, and training cleaners to conduct manual inspections. With bed bugs that grow to a maximum of 5mm long, they are difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, leading to understandable cases of lack of identification.
During the Bed Pod’s first year, 94.2% of Spotta’s cases were successfully detected, with guests reporting bed bugs making up only 3.3% of the cases and housekeeping identifying the remaining 2.5%.
Fryers continues, “Bed Pod’s first year results show that we have a credible, proven solution with real-world effectiveness. This is a significant advancement for pest controllers and hoteliers to help them proactively monitor bed bugs.”
Spotta announced in July 2020 that it has raised £ 934,000 in seed capital to expand the Bed Pod to new markets including the US and to develop other products such as the Forest Pod that are currently in advanced field trials. More information is available at spotta.co
About Spotta
Founded in 2018 in Cambridge, UK, Spotta leverages the latest technology to revolutionize pest control and shift the industry from reactive to proactive.
Spotta’s intelligent pest systems offer unique solutions for detecting and monitoring pests in their “home” environment – such as bed bugs in hotels and apartment buildings, and pine beetles in forests – and enable pest controllers to respond early and specifically to the presence of pests. This early action will result in a reduction in the pesticides used in the treatment and will minimize the overall damage caused by pests if they are treated before a large scale infestation can occur.
Find out more at spotta.co
