This news is really stinging for foreigners dreaming of visiting New York City.
About 188 local hotels, including 108 within a mile of Times Square, have reportedly hosted some very undesirable guests in recent years: bed bugs.
That’s according to a new study by Pest Strategies, an online resource for pest control tips and services.
“It is important to bring to light a report that highlights hotels as the primary transmission vector,” said Shane Dutka, 30-year-old, operations manager at the Raleigh, NC portal, who helped produce the report. “I think that is completely under-reported. I think there are many, many bed bug cases that never reach [the news]. “
The study’s biggest culprit is the Queens County Inn and Suites in Long Island City, which has had 36 bed bug complaints since 2010 – seven of them between January 2018 and February 2020.
The hotel, which did not return a message for comment, received its last infestation complaint in January.
“[Both our] Beds were infested with bed bugs, ”claims an anonymous comment on The Bedbug Registry, a public database tracking sightings of the creepy crawlers in the US and Canada. “[My friend] it itched after breakfast and saw them crawling on the sheet … when I turned my covers … there were so many … when I turned the covers, they were all over the walls, ceiling, etc. … and we were bitten all over the place. “
Pest Strategies compiled bed bug reviews for 758 properties in the city from The Bedbug Registry, Bed Bug Reports, and Tripadvisor. To identify the top 10 most infested cases, the group compared the total number of bed bug complaints from each hotel to the number of bug-related ratings received between 2019 and 2021. Complaints with defamation or inaccurate descriptions without photo evidence didn’t make it. .
“We review these ratings and make sure we use our best judgment,” said Dutka. “We did our best to keep things as true and narrow as possible.”
Wellington Hotel in Midtown, now closed through January 2022 for a flood-related elevator replacement, ranks 2nd. There are 20 bed bug complaints of all time, the last of which was temporarily closed in November 2020, a month before the hotel was closed via Tripadvisor.
“The staff didn’t want to come in and see when I called them to show them the bed bug,” the commentator wrote. “The manager wanted me to go so she can send an inspection. She claimed they couldn’t find one, but it was [a] total cover-up. “
Henry Demera, 46, Wellington’s director of security – his department responds to bed bug complaints first to gather information – told the Post the hotel was being destroyed daily.
“In the rare cases where it is positive, we gas the room,” he said. “We went so far as to basically demonstrate a room … the hotel takes it very seriously.”
# 3 is the Bowery House in Nolita, which has had eight complaints since 2018 and has not returned any messages asking for comments. The Art Deco Hotel Edison, which is only a few steps away from Times Square and landed in 5th place, did not either. His last complaint came in December 2019 when a visitor from the UK claimed “you could see the blood where they had bitten”. the leaves.”
“They had mattress covers on [the beds]”Said 44-year-old Edison guest Donna Larrick. She was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and was one of dozens of guests to walk in and out of the busy hotel on a Wednesday. “I always check.”
Hotel visitors usually bring the critters with them with luggage or clothes – and with more people visiting the Big Apple this year, the symptoms could get worse.
“New York, because of its dense population and amount of travel, is just so common to see [bed bugs]. I am sure that it will only continue when we get out of COVID, ”said Dutka.
