Since these little vermin are permeating so many places & objects now if ever I need to stay in a hotel/motel I would ask the manager to let me check out the room first to inspect for them before ponying up my dollars. Since they come out at night (mostly)
, you can look around the edges of the mattress for signs of blood. Also, asking if this is a new mattress & what is your policy in controlling any outbreak of critters.
Rome
We had my 1979 waterbed. It just offered too much to the bugs, so it got disassembled and tossed. We had a new mattress and box spring delivered the day before our initial treatment. We put bedbug encasements on them and slept on the bed. It was treated as a part of the initial treatment, then we put brand new bedding on, and ClimbUp traps under the feet of the frame and night tables. When looking they like to climb, and the traps have pitfalls which they have to cross to get to the bed legs to climb. They cannot climb out of the pitfalls. This makes for an island in the storm, so you can sleep without fear of being bitten.
Prep was horrible. Most of the contents of the treatment area of the house have to go out. Some to storage and some to the landfill. We tossed so much of what we had. It really hurt. Once treatment began, nothing that has not been treated comes back into the treated area. Treatment methods, depending on what can be tolerated and how quick it needs to be complete: Heat, steam, vaporous pesticides, insect growth regulators, residuals, contact pesticides, etc.
For me the worst was the contents of my media shelving (vinyl, CDs, cassettes, reels, etc.) So many places for the bugs to harbor in. If you do not use seal-able outer sleeves, you better start using them.
Nothing from someone else's house comes into mine without treatment, from now on. Shoes off at the door and left outside. Backpacks and purses, etc. stay in your car. No sleepovers. One fellow recently had a friend of their teen stay over and the fun then began. Incoming luggage (exposure possible on planes, old folks homes, and in hotels): clothes go straight into wash and dry, then an additional dry cycle on high; the luggage goes into a portable heat box to soak at 140 degF for a while, or into a sealed ziplock bag with a Nuvan strip for 3+ weeks.
You learn to live in and out of ziplock bags of all sizes. freshly treated items go in bags, and stuff headed to laundry and treatment in their own bags.
My ground zero was my recliner and adjacent love set (I would sleep in those, since I go to bed much later than my wife). Only found 3 hiding in the corners of the waterbed frame.
To keep from spreading yours to others, freshly laundered clothes are put on just before you leave. Shoes are great places for hitchhikers, so they get steamed, brushed and polished. Our bags and purses are left in our car, and not carried in anywhere.
Our congregational facilities have been inspected with no signs seen, but that does not mean much. If someone sleeps in a location, discoverable harborages form. Where no one sleeps stragglers can hide and sleep until folks arrive. We signed up for regular treatments, and will be using active traps (pheromones, CO2 exhaling, and warmth), to see if we have stragglers. We want to prevent hitchhikers.
The two worst days of bed bug exposure are the day you see your first one, and the day you tell your first person about them. Hence, folks tend to not tell others, so they cause those others to unwittingly experience the non-zero possibility of exposure without their own informed consent.
The last teaching I gave to my congregation was education on prevalence and measures to mitigate against bed bugs. I then confessed that I, the pastor, had come down with them. I thought it might kill the congregation. We shall see how many ever return.
The day is coming when we will all have them, just like it was before the 40s and 50s. G_d forbid, bed bugs are coming to a sofa or bed near you, it is just a matter of time...
Rich P