No sleeping tight when hotel bedbugs bite

Bedbug infestations are more than an itchy problem for hotels across North America. They are becoming more expensiveas at least one tourist is suing after she says she spent a night in an infested hotel bed.

"I received more than 650 bites,"alleges Eunice Juarez, a tourist from Mexico who is suinga Los Angeles-area hotel.

Juarezsaid shestayed one nightat the Marriott International in August, and claims that she and her two teenage sonswent to thehospital instead of Disneyland.

"When she woke up, she was covered with blood," said Juarez's lawyer, Alan Schnurman. "The sheets were full of blood."

The approximately five-millimetre-long bedbug is not a disease carrier, but it isa nuisance, causing itchy, painful welts to rise on bitten skin. In some cases, the bites can become seriously infected.

One veteran exterminator in L.A. saysthat 20 years ago, hehad few calls about bedbugs. But now pest-control companies are juggling jobs from panicked hoteliers across the country.

"They lose a lot of money because, you know, this is a tourist town," said David Rike, manager of Dewey Pest Control in L.A. "Sometimes we justtell them to just get rid of the bed."

The pestsarehard to eradicate, and areenjoying a renaissance in part because they escape eco-friendly measures such as ant and cockroach traps that have replacedconventional bug sprays.

The bites are making for bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived guests at four-star hotels in many North American cities, and pest control experts say some travellers are taking the bugs home in their luggage.

Even if guests think their trip was bedbug-free, they advise people to unpack in the garage and launder their travel clothes quickly, in case the bugs hitched a ride.