Bedbug infestations are more than an itchy problem for hotels across North America. They are becoming more expensive as 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 suing a Los Angeles-area hotel.

It can take multiple visits from an exterminator to find all the bedbugs and eggs lurking in bedding and upholstery.
(CBC)

Juarez said she stayed one night at the Marriott International in August, and claims that she and her two teenage sons went to the hospital 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 is a 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. says that 20 years ago, he had 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 just tell them to just get rid of the bed."

The pests are hard to eradicate, and are enjoying a renaissance in part because they escape eco-friendly measures such as ant and cockroach traps that have replaced conventional 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.