Best Western offers free night after bedbug attack, but is it enough?

Patricia Lenhart’s husband woke up one recent morning covered in bug bites. Bedbug bites. He and his wife were guests at the Best Western Beach Dunes Inn in Marina, Calif., and when they mentioned the probable infestation, a woman at the front desk said the hotel “hadn’t had a problem” with bedbugs before.

Then they checked out TripAdvisor, and discovered that wasn’t true.

“I found two recent reviews complaining of bedbugs,” she says. “Both people state that they notified the front desk. One of them was over a month ago! Unfortunately, they were both posted after I made my reservation. I don’t have any faith that the hotel will follow through on their promise to fix this.”

I contacted Best Western on her behalf, and as you’ll see in a minute, it reacted quickly. Question is, did it do enough?

First, let’s hear Lenhart’s story.

She and her husband were spending the weekend at the Best Western. On Sunday morning, her husband awoke with what appeared to be insect bites.

We were hoping that they were mosquito bites, but an inspection of the bedding revealed drops of blood on his pillow and sheet and a very small bug that left a smear of blood when it was squashed.

Research on the Internet confirmed that the bite pattern is exactly like the examples of bedbug’s bites.

We know that bedbugs have become epidemic in this country and our concern was for any future occupants of that room. We talked to the woman at the front counter who told us that they hadn’t had a problem with bedbugs before.

We discussed the work she would have to deal with the problem and what we needed to do to prevent spreading the problem to our home. She gave us some large plastic bags to put our luggage in and we left feeling she would take care of the problem.

I used the contact form on Best Western’s website to notify them of the problem and ask for their assurance that his is being dealt with, but only received a form letter in reply. I search the Internet for a proper e-mail address to write to, but the only one I found returned the a-mail.

How do I make sure this is being dealt with?

Good question. I contacted Best Western and here’s what happened next:

An hour after your e-mail, I got a response from Best Western. I was offered an apology and a free night at the hotel, which we plan to turn down. Our concern was that the problem be addressed.

It’s clear that she was responding to the e-mail from you rather than the e-mail I submitted on their website. What a shame, that it took your intervention to get a response. I would think that the word bedbug would generate an immediate response rather than a form letter given the epidemic-like problem that hotels are having with bedbugs.

Is Best Western’s response adequate, given what happened to the Lenharts? Or should they have done more?

A quick poll of 200 readers this morning suggests an overwhelming majority (93 percent) believes Best Western didn’t do enough.

What do you think?

(Photo: phil h/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Chicky

    No, I don’t think the hotel did enough. At the very least, they should have refunded the couple’s night’s stay. It would have also been nice if they had told the Lenharts that they had called the exterminator and had the room fumigated, that they were examining their laundry procedures, etc.
    Mrs. Lenhart is probably right: they’re probably renting that buggy room to other people without doing a thing. That’s scary.
    Makes me shudder.

  • Charles

    Airlines and hotels love to pass out offers for free rooms or flights when there is a problem because most people will never use them. Who on earth would return to a hotel where they got bed bug bites? This couple is a Tripadvisor reader, so they would not have booked at all had the bed bug reviews come in earlier (bonus points for being a savvy consumer, BTW). I do hope they are posting a review themselves. Multiple reviews like this show a pattern. So, the free night is worthless and I rather consider it an insult.

  • http://www.adventureinternational.com Mike P

    What is enough in the case? These poor people don’t know if any of the bedbugs hitched a ride home in their luggage and are poised to infest their home! What I want to hear is that they’ve taken the room out of inventory until they can get the problem under control. This is just the sort of thing that is contributing the he spread of bedbugs. I would expect a clean and infestatio free room from any hotel in the US. If they can’t addess the issue then, at least to me this is a health issue and their should be someone at the county or state level that should be notified to make them resolve the problem. There is clearly a pattern showing here, and they are not choosing to resolve it on their own.

    A free night is a joke. “Hey, come back and enjoy our bedbugs for one more night!”, I would decline as well. In this case a full refund is due, and possible future damages should they discover bedbugs in their home.

  • Steve

    No, of course offering a free night in the future (yeah, because who wouldn’t want to come back and stay at a bedbug-infested hotel, right?) isn’t adequate. At a bare minimum, this couple deserves a full refund for the night they stayed at the hotel.

  • http://www.all-about-guatemala.com Benjamin Barnett

    Considering the trouble the Lenharts are going to have to go through to rid their belongings of the bedbugs, they should have received a free night’s stay, at the least, and not in the future.

  • jamru

    I agree that the offer of a free night at the same hotel seems like poor compensation given the staff’s underwhelming response to their bedbug problem. If the hotel is unwilling to refund all or part of the Lenhart’s stay, at the very least it should offer a free night at ANY Best Western property.

  • Teresa

    I think a refund is in order, especially given the history on TripAdvisor (which I just looked at). But can anyone say whether they have any legal grounds for one, or are we just moralizing here?

    Also, does anyone know whether local health authorities concern themselves with bedbugs in hotels? There seems to be a legitimate public health rationale.

  • Brian C

    I’m sorry, a hotel that had prior knowledge of bed bug infestation and allowed additional guests to stay in an infested room is negligent and should be required to pay all abatement costs.

    The trip advisor posts warning of bed bug bites clearly showed that the hotel was notified of an infestation the hotel acted negligently by allowing another guest to stay in that room. Their lack of action caused harm to another guest and they should be held responsible. At very least the hotel should pay for professional laundering of the Lenhart’s clothes and personal belongings that were brought into that infested room.

    A hotel that sacrifices a guest’s health and safety for additional room revenue is reprehensible.

  • Jennifer

    I was going to suggest Patricia file a complaint with bedbugregistry.com but I see she has already done that. Anyone can check out a hotel to see if someone filed a report regarding the hotel on that site. It’s based on user reported information so it’s buyer beware that some information may not be accurate, however.

    This is an epidemic and really, what is someone supposed to do to prevent the bugs from hitching a ride and infesting a guest’s own home? Hotels have to be more proactive about this. There have got to be mattresses that are bed bug resistant, like Tempurpedic, maybe?

  • Riroon

    The free room gift might or might not be appropriate. What is of concern is the fib at the front desk and the fact that corporated didn’t act without Mr. Elliott’s intervention. The truth and a swift response go a long way, almost farther than the compensation being offered.

  • http://www.kylehepp.com Kyle

    Ew, that’s disgusting.

    We stayed at a Best Western in Italy where the rooms literally smelled like feces because of a plumbing problem they had. They also did nothing to remedy the situation.

    I would just ignore them and tell all your friends to never stay at a Best Western ever again.

  • Erika

    Of course I read this just as I’m getting ready to stay at a Best Western. Think a phone call to them is in order. But, back to this situation, ABSOLUTELY NO to the question as to whether or not enough was done. Bed Bugs are among the most insidious creatures known to man – they will hide in everything even plumbing pipes. Unless the Lenhart’s immediately washed all of their clothing in hot, hot water and dried everything on high heat, fumigated their luggage (or better yet, tossed/burned the whole lot) the chances are pretty good a “critter” came home with them. And that is a whole new headache. Best Western should have immediately refunded their stay and offered to pay for whatever cleaning/fumigation services were required to ensure the Lenhart’s belongings were bug free. The “free night” should have been added on top of that – not be the only offer.

  • Amanda

    A few years ago I stayed at a Red Roof Inn (my first mistake, but I was 18 and didn’t have a lot of money), and there were bed bugs in the room. I didn’t have a problem, but my boyfriend was being bitten at night, but since I hadn’t seen any I didn’t believe him. On the last day of our stay I found a bedbug on the pillow, and it totally freaked me out. At checkout, I told the person at the counter that there were bugs in our room, and he just said “Okay,” and only charged us for half our stay, no questions asked, which made me think that there had been complaints about the bedbugs before.

    I guess my point is that this problem is more common than most people think, and a free night or two is all any hotel thinks the problem is worth.

  • Ed

    I never understood the free offers to stay/cruise/rent when you had a miserable time in the first place! I mean, if it sucked the first time, why would you *WANT* to do it again? There are things that I would never want to do twice…getting kicked in the groin, and staying at a place that sucks, rank right up there in the top two!

  • Drew

    Monterey County, CA, where Marina is, does, to my knowledge, care about Bedbug infestations… You might try giving them a call at 831-647-7654… that’s “Consumer Health Protection Services”…

  • http://www.lastminuteholidaysinthesun.com lastminuteholidaysinthesun

    It makes you wonder how many hotel beds have this and similar problems! Hotel rooms don’t get the same TLC as our homes. It is reasonable to expect that cleaning and laundry standards should eliminate bedbugs though.

  • Carrie Charney

    Just to show you how “nomadic” and not just confined to beds the little vantz (Yiddish for bedbug) is, they were just found in the book drop of a neighborhood library in Frederick, MD. It was in the news last week.

  • Mike Z

    Wow, at the bare minimum, the couple was owed a complete refund as well as ANY costs for replacing or laundering their clothing and amenities to make sure there were no creatures that traveled home with them. I would also be afraid that the clothing they put on the next day was even safe.

    If they wished I am sure they could easily win an award in small claims because they could show that the hotel knew of the problem.

    The offer of a free room in the future is an insult.

  • Mary Graham

    Horrible! Well, this post alone tells us not to ever stay at a Best Western! Yuck! Did they not think we would find out? Wake up all you substandard businesses. We WILL find you out and go elsewhere. I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of giving my hard earned money to businesses who don’t give a “hoot” about me. Thanks for the heads up on BW

  • Kevin M

    Mary et al.: The problem with taking such an approach with Best Western is that, even more than most franchised brands, Best Western hotels vary enormously in amenities and quality. Unlike, say, Holiday Inn Express (a brand which has certain fixed standards which must be met by every hotel franchised through the brand), Best Western is more akin to a shared reservations service; not only is each property independently owned and managed, but there are very few requirements to be a Best Western. You pay your franchise fees, and you get to use the signs and the logos; you get listed in the web database as a hotel, and people can book through the “corporate” site. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess what you’ll get or what you’ll pay.

    Some Best Westerns are very, very nice hotels. Some are pits. Unfortunately, because there isn’t the brand structure that is in place for some other brands, it’s hard to know which you’re getting.

  • Kay

    I manage a small inn and we take pride in our cleanliness. However, we were finally hit with a bed bug complaint last week after many decades of no issues. I say finally because we are very vigilant in monitoring our rooms and we still got them! This is a major outbreak across the country of these pesky guys. Our inn refunded the night immediately and we put the room out of service for two weeks. The pest expert did a cleaning of the room and recommends it staying out of service for that period to guarantee its clean. However…the vacuums can carry it from room to room and these guys can stay dormant for 18 months! That Best Western might have taken the room out of service but when the guest was moved or the room vacuumed before discovery, the bed bug traveled to a new room. They can travel 30 feet in one night through walls and you don’t always see signs right away. It is insidious and unfortunately no public facility is immune anymore….hotel, movie theater, high-rises, dorms, etc.