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[00:00:00] Annette: Hello, welcome back for another great week. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
I am Annette Grant, and together we are–
[00:00:06] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:00:07] Sarah: And we’re going to kick off this episode like we do every week, and that is sharing one of you, our amazing listeners who’s using our hashtag #STRShareSunday. Annette, who are we sharing this week?
[00:00:17] Annette: This week we are sharing @frontrangeaframe. Again, that’s @frontrangeaframe. Would you please come to the front desk? That’s what it sounded like. Let’s get into it though. I got jokes always, so everyone knows. The biggest thing that stood out, and I want to make this a, um, public service announcement to all of you short-term rental hosts out there. Whitney, love your account.
But one of the things we love the most is in Whitney’s bio, in her Instagram, she has, not seeking collabs at the moment. I so respect that. I bet you Whitney was being bombarded, and other hosts listening right now, maybe you are too, with potential collabs from influencers that would like to stay for free in exchange for photos or a shout out on their page.
So I respect that she is putting that there because I wonder how much time and energy is going into maybe some not so fruitful collabs. So hosts, we just want to take this time for a PSA to really vet those collaborations. They can be, shall I say, ego-boosting in the beginning, but we just want to remind you, you’ve got to make sure that both of you are getting results there.
And you need to have a clear definition of what you want that to result in for yourself. And just be careful that you have some parameters built in. You want to make sure it’s not during those busy times that you could be getting potential revenue or a lot of revenue.
So just make sure before– I know very complimentary to get those requests, but you just want to make sure that you have that built into your whole entire year. And maybe it is part of your marketing, but have that built in and ready to go. But other than that, there’s so many other things about Whitney’s property, but I just wanted to give her a shout out for putting that in there.
I’ve never seen that before, and I just think it’s a great way to let people know where you stand on that, whatever type of collab it is. You got to stand for something or fall for anything. But this A-Frame, which they purchased a few years ago, they have done a complete reno and they’ve just taken the time and attention to detail.
And if you go through their feed, they have made the investment in some higher end furnishings into their cedar hot tub. And as I can tell from their post, it looks like they are reaping the rewards from their reviews and finances by investing in their property from the get-go. So Whitney, we are going to put you on our wish list.
Thank you for using the hashtag. If anybody is heading to Colorado soon, make sure to reach out to them and book a stay. All right, Sarah, let’s get into the episode. Have a vulnerable moment. Let everybody know.
[00:03:15] Sarah: Listen, everybody, I want you to know how much I love all of you for tuning in each week, because this episode truly comes from the depths of my heart and bravery because when I first moved to New York City as a young budding actress, and it wasn’t more than I think a year into living there, it was, I don’t–
[00:03:34] Annette: When you were invincible.
[00:03:36] Sarah: Invincible. 2005, also very poor. And this little bug started popping up into headlines, and I was one of the early victims of this bug coming back to existence in our society. And it is, I’m going to say it once, I don’t if I’ll be able to say it again for the rest of this episode, but they’re bedbugs.
This episode is important for all of you because you cannot predict getting the bedbug, having an infestation. It has nothing to do with how clean you are, how well-vetted your guests are. These bugs truly feed on human blood, and so as long as you’re alive, this bug wants everything to do with you, and you can pick them up truly anywhere.
And I’ve had them about three times in my life. Twice in New York City when I lived there, and then once when I was on tour. And actually it wasn’t from staying in a hotel on tour. I was an actor and we were touring with musicals. We were staying at a friend’s house who lived in San Francisco.
And I thought I was saving money and hanging out with a friend. And she didn’t know it at the time but she had the bug. So yeah, that’s what today’s episode’s about. So one of our past members from our membership Hosting Business Mastery membership, she’s here in Columbus, and she messaged me that she’s having this issue. And I was like, Annette, we’ve never done an episode on this terrible, terrible, but very important topic because these bugs are expensive. And if you don’t think it’ll happen to you–
[00:05:08] Annette: They do not discriminate at all.
[00:05:10] Sarah: They don’t discriminate. And I hope it never does happen to you, but the important part is knowing what to do and tackling it the right way the first time. Because if you don’t, it is incredibly expensive.
[00:05:22] Annette: Yeah. There’s going to be two parts to this episode. The first part is we’re going to talk about some prevent measures that you can take in the beginning, but again, like we said, they do not discriminate. So we’re going to help you as much as we can, but we’re also going to give you some post information if this ever happens to you.
There’s four things that we want to go over that we think could be extremely preventative. And the first one is, and I know there’s a lot of you out there, but please just heed our warning. We have to tell you we warned you. If you are a Facebook marketplace finder and a thrifty, we love you. We understand that there can be some amazing gems on those sites.
[00:06:03] Sarah: And this is sustainable. I’m here for the sustainability aspect of it.
[00:06:05] Annette: However, when it comes to couches, mattresses, those fabrics, we just have to warn you. Sarah can probably attest to this, that one of the bedbug infestations came from–
[00:06:22] Sarah: A couch.
[00:06:22] Annette: A couch that was in our lobby.
[00:06:25] Sarah: It was brand new and it was 2005. So again, bedbugs weren’t in the headlines yet. And my lovely roommate, I was working at a restaurant, she texted me, she goes, oh my God. You’re going to be so excited to see what I brought up to our apartment when you get home. And for some reason I knew this was bad. My intuition–
[00:06:40] Annette: Why wouldn’t someone else in the building get rid of it.
[00:06:42] Sarah: Yeah. It was like– the math didn’t math and she brought this couch up to our apartment and weeks later we couldn’t figure out why we all had giant hives all over our body. And my world was forever changed, honestly because I never felt more violated.
[00:06:59] Annette: Mm-hmm. And we’ve heard all the stories. We’ve heard the stories of people furnishing their properties with these finds, or maybe not even finds on Facebook marketplace or thrift store. We’ve heard some where they find things maybe in other places.
[00:07:15] Sarah: The side of the road. And again, because we understand sustainability, we get that buying new, even as short-term rentals ourselves, we have to be very conscious about the waste that we create as hosts. And we’re not trying to be insensitive.
[00:07:26] Annette: Oh, I’ve been there. I’ve been like, wait, this is awesome. Why is this here? I want to– now I know. It’s probably out there, I always thought it was because they were moving, like, oh, they probably just couldn’t take it with them.
But now I know there might be a larger issue there. So that’s step number one. Step number two, please get bedbug mattress protectors and pillow case protectors. I know a lot of people always invest in the mattress protector and sometimes forget about the pillow, or they do the pillow and not the mattress.
So wise investment for a multitude of reasons. And what I love about the mattress and pillow protectors is it’s going to protect against so many other things, not just the bed bedbugs. But you need to make sure that there are certain ones that are specifically for bedbugs. Because you will notice they are airtight. They zip, and Velcro. They are tight.
So there is definitely a difference. So you might be listening, thinking, oh, I have mattress protectors. I have pillow protectors. Double check because the ones that protect against bedbugs are different. The next one that we want to chat about, you guys know, because I talk about it every time. I see it every day.
Please have a vacuum cleaner that stays in your property. That’s for your team and for your guests. You don’t know where that vacuum cleaner has been before. If your turnover cleaning team is bringing it in, it might be their house. It might be the last house they were at. You just don’t know.
[00:08:52] Sarah: It’s not like spiders where you suck the spider up and you know they’re dead because of the air. Bedbugs are incredibly resilient. I mean, DDT is the reason why we went so long without bedbugs from the mid-80s until, again, about 2005.
But DDT, unfortunately, also causes cancer. So it’s incredibly toxic. And so getting rid of these bugs is very hard and still today. And it’s expensive. So these vacuums, they’re not dying if they’re being sucked up by a vacuum. So they will absolutely transfer from place to place if you’re allowing vacuums and mops that haven’t been cleaned from home to home. So just make sure everything’s going. That way things can stay contained. All right, Annette, is that it?
[00:09:35] Annette: No. Got the biggest one last.
[00:09:38] Sarah: Oh, biggest tip.
[00:09:40] Annette: If you do not have short-term rental insurance that covers you for bedbugs, please look at your policy today. And we get this question so often of like, I have air cover or I have homeowner’s insurance. Please look through both of those. I highly doubt they will cover bedbugs and potentially your loss of revenue if you get bedbugs. And so I can’t speak to all of the insurance parameters around that.
But if you haven’t looked at your policy or you haven’t reached out to your representative, I would definitely shoot an email across to them just confirming, they could probably point it out really quickly to you, what might happen if you were to get bedbugs. Would they cover the lost revenue? Would they cover coming in to take care of it?
I don’t know exactly what your insurance would cover there, but I know that short term rental specific does have that in there. Please check on that. We’re going to have to see if we can have one of our friends come on and talk about that.
[00:10:40] Sarah: Because what I want you to understand is right now, so one of our new team members we want to introduce you to soon, everybody. Her name is Colleen. She comes to us from the hotel world and as she comes to us, just in the past few weeks, there is a room at her hotel or her old hotel that had an infestation of bedbugs and is six weeks.
Again, it’s a commercial space. They have all the tools within their reach. They have protocol SOPs, which we’re going to share with you very soon here on this episode, but it’s six weeks. Now, imagine that’s you and your home, and that is how much revenue that you could be missing out on. Could be your high season, could be your low season. Like we said, these bugs don’t discriminate
[00:11:19] Annette: And they had to get rid of the mattresses, tearing up the carpet. So it’s not just the revenue that you’re losing out on during that time. It’s also what investment are you having to make to actually eradicate the bugs too.
[00:11:32] Sarah: Yeah. What happens if you get them? You’re like, cool ladies, thank you. Now that I’m freaked out entirely, what do I do if I get them? And that is the most important thing to know, is to, yes, sure, be afraid of it, but also have a plan in place.
[00:11:43] Annette: Ooh, one last super tip, because Colleen was going over this pretty thoroughly with us too. Last part of preventative, not last, but one of the important ones, if you have a potential guest reach out to you and they’re looking for a stay because they need somewhere to stay because they’re getting rid of beg bugs, or the current place that they’re staying, or hotel or Airbnb, or their own home has bedbugs and they need to relocate, I would not let them relocate into your– again, I know you can’t discriminate against them, but the issue is you don’t know if–
[00:12:20] Sarah: No. Because people don’t handle it correctly. I’m just going to interrupt you because I feel very passionate about this. I’ll never forget I was in an audition in New York, and it was a couple of years after being traumatized by having bedbugs several times. And I was sitting next to a woman, a friend of mine. She was like, oh my gosh, I had to move out of my apartment yesterday on a whim. And my friends and I were like, why? And she was like, because we have bedbugs and we just can’t get rid of them. So all she did was pack up her stuff into a U-Haul. So now the U-Haul was–
[00:12:43] Annette: Passed all the bugs.
[00:12:44] Sarah: Yes. And then she just moved to a new apartment. And this is what people are doing. And I get it. The problem is expensive to eradicate. It’s expensive to take care of. And so this is why it makes it very hard and tricky. So everyone, we– this episode is coming to you with love and understanding that this is not a fun topic to talk about, but is, again, it’s crazy expensive and you have to know what to do so it doesn’t need to be more expensive than it needs to be.
[00:13:09] Annette: Colleen was letting us know that if another hotel is trying to transfer guests because they have bedbugs or if guests are trying to check in, they’re just–
[00:13:17] Sarah: They’ll refuse service.
[00:13:17] Annette: Sorry, we’re booked. We cannot have you anywhere near our property. And again, it’s not about the person, it’s about the bug.
[00:13:25] Sarah: And so I’m going to preface this, what to do with this. In your world, in your operations with your team, whether it’s your team and a bunch of vendors, or your hiring cleaning team, or you have your inspectors, create a world of open communication. If they see an ant, if they see a baby cockroach, which are often mistaken as bedbugs, give them the open-door policy to let you know every time and to run to you and let you know every time because these bugs get mistaken all the time.
We have an example, a property, and I just renovated last year. I think it was our third guest in, they sent us a picture of a bug on a pillow. My stomach sank and I freaked out. And what I did was, I’m going to go with the SOPs. I did all these things. The guest left. I called an entomologist. I called a bedbug expert to go in and confirm. I wanted to know what bug this was.
[00:14:17] Annette: Right. Not hearsay.
[00:14:19] Sarah: So he went in, he took the bug back to his lab. It was not a bug. It was some beetle in which he gave me a report saying that it was not a bedbug that I could then put on, it was via Airbnb we got booking. I uploaded that to Airbnb so they could see that it was not a bedbug because I don’t need that scarlet letter on the property.
[00:14:36] Annette: Forget, Sarah, because we got the invoice. It was not cheap, but it also was a fraction of having anything like maybe 150.
[00:14:43] Sarah: It was the best $150 I ever spent my entire life.
[00:14:45] Annette: And that guy, he was awesome. He came out ASAP.
[00:14:47] Sarah: He came out that day. Because he could hear in my voice, I was like, this matters very much to me, to know where I’m at in my life.
[00:14:55] Annette: AD MARKER
[00:14:56] Sarah: Okay. So create a culture with your cleaning team, with your inspectors of, hey, these things, they don’t discriminate. It’s not about how clean you are. It’s not about how good you are at cleaning.
[00:15:06] Annette: Right. It’s not a reflection of your work. That’s, I think, the most important thing to talk to them about. It’s not a reflection of your work at all.
[00:15:12] Sarah: It’s not reflection of your work. It’s not a reflection of how much you make. It is nothing to do with any of those things. In fact, I read this back in the day when these little suckers came into my life, literally, back in the day, having bedbugs used to be a sign of wealth because you had a warm place where you could lay down and bodies warm.
[00:15:30] Annette: And they wanted to find you.
[00:15:31] Sarah: Yes. And they would find you. So if you had bedbug bites, it was actually a symbol of wealth. So just take that with you because people can make them it– it can make them feel bad or like less than. But again, these bugs don’t discriminate. So let your cleaners know, especially if you’re hiring a cleaning team.
Ask them, what are your safety protocols? And see if they bring it up. So we’re not just talking about bleach and chemicals and making sure we’re not cross contaminating, but we’re also talking about what are your protocols, do you look for these bugs? How do you look for them, and what do you do if you find them? See if they have their own operational procedure because they are the first line of defense in most cases.
[00:16:06] Annette: Mm-hmm. And that’s also, unfortunately, something that we need to dig into too. If for some reason you were to get them, depending on how many people you have coming in and out of your house, not just the guests, but if you have service providers coming in, they could come in on purses or shoes or any material that they’re wearing.
So you need to do a deep dive also if you were to ever get them. Make sure that everyone on your team is in the loop on that. But what do you do, Sarah? They’ve been spotted, unfortunately. Our team has come to us, they ran to us, found something. What happens?
[00:16:38] Sarah: Let’s go the [Inaudible] scenario, because you can take it. If your team finds it, you can pick up this scenario where we left off, but let’s say a guest tells you. Because that’s the biggest what if, is how do we be the hospitality providers we are and make sure these guests aren’t taking it with them.
And here’s what you can tell them to do. You can tell them to take their clothes off, put it in the dryer at the hottest setting for as long as possible. They can put their clothing back on and leave their luggage and anything they’re not confident that has the bugs there at your property and you will reimburse them.
[00:17:11] Annette: But when you say as long as possible, I know you have some SOPs over there, is it an hour, is it 15 minutes? What should we tell the minimum?
[00:17:18] Sarah: At least an hour on highest heat possible. So if the offer is bulky bedding, towel settings, they’re at the highest heat you can possibly do for at least an hour. This way the guests can ensure they’re not going to take it with them whenever they leave.
And even if they do that, let’s say they take their clothes off, the entire party take their clothes, they put it in the dryer for an hour and a half, and they leave the home, have them leave their luggage either outside bagged in a garbage bag or whatever they want to do, and you will reimburse them. Here’s where money starts adding up. That’s the right thing to do, in my opinion, because you don’t want them to take it with them and again, be a part of that bigger problem.
And then when they get home, what I would recommend you tell them to do is if they’ve got a garage or a place outside where they can have someone put a blanket and shield them, take off those clothes, bag them up and go inside the house and start fresh. It’s honestly what I would have them do.
[00:18:08] Annette: Okay.
[00:18:08] Sarah: Okay. That’s where we’re at.
[00:18:09] Annette: Right. Because we are going to tell a story of a firsthand encounter of someone that did stay in a hotel, did get the bedbugs, they went home to their apartment. I just learned this today. This is something new that I did not know. But the bedbugs can penetrate the HVAC and also your outlets.
So if you are connected to any other– let’s say you’re in a multi-family, and you’re connected to any other building, you want tape those off. And so when that guest got home to their own property, they actually spread the bedbugs to other–
[00:18:45] Sarah: I keep calling them the bedbugs.
[00:18:48] Annette: The bedbugs. The other people in their building got them because they freaking may– I mean, I’m just going to say it probably was from them. If they were– it was their neighbors, and they can go up, they can go down, they can go side to side. But I had no clue about the taping of the outlets and the HVAC until–
[00:19:05] Sarah: So yeah. Annette is skipping, uh, ahead because it’s a big– yeah. Okay, your guests leave, the reservation gets canceled, money out of your pocket. They leave their luggage there, you replace it for them. Maybe you even put them up for the place that night if they’re out of town. But again, tell them, it is not in our best interest for any of us for you to bring that bug with you to that hotel. Do your best to not bring that bug with you at your next spot. So there’s that. Okay.
Then it depends on, and what I want you to do after listening to this episode is try to get in your back pocket, a company that you can lean on if this happens to you, so you know who to call right away. Because you need to know what step happens next. It’s one of two things. It’s either the company offers the service of, okay, the guest is out now they go in and help you from A to Z. Or if you’re like a commercial space where the companies, the exterminators request that the commercial hotels, essentially, strip the room of all the fabrics. So the hotel has to remove the bedding. The hotel has to tape up, like Annette said, the vents, the outlets, anything that can penetrate, to not even just other apartments. Let’s say you have, um, a single-family home and multiple bedrooms. You want those bugs to say contained to that bedroom if you can.
[00:20:18] Annette: I have a question. I don’t think this was in the SOPs I was reading. Let’s say I was the person going in to take off the bedsheets and put them in the bag. Am I wearing gloves? What the heck am I wearing? What do I do? What do you– are they jumping on me? Now I’m all–
[00:20:36] Sarah: Let’s say you’re a company that you want to work with. They say, the thing is, you need to prep the space for us. We will not take the bedding off of your bed and do all the things. So then what I recommended you do is designate who that human will be. It’ll be my husband, and they will put on, essentially a, not a hazmat suit, but a onesie and putting some, either rubber boot that has no seams or people will tie garbage bags high up on their legs.
[00:21:02] Annette: Oh, okay.
[00:21:03] Sarah: So it’s harder for these bugs to crawl on you and take them with you. And then when you’re done with the space prepping, you can de-robe and–
[00:21:10] Annette: Burn it. Burn the clothes. Probably shouldn’t burn them.
[00:21:13] Sarah: Kind of. So here we are. Your guests left. They’re not happy, but you’ve done what you can do. If this booking came from an OTA, let the OTA know what’s going on. If it’s a direct booking, then all you have to worry about is telling yourself. And trust me, that’s going to be hard to do, to live with this because it’s frustrating.
You already have your company that you want to work with and they’ve told you that you have to prep the space for them. So you’re going to go in there, you’re going to bag up all of the linens and what we did in New York is go to a laundromat and wash those things on very, very high heat.
[00:21:46] Annette: Then you go to the laundro– oh my gosh, I’m never leaving my house again. No.
[00:21:49] Sarah: That doesn’t mean it won’t come to you.
[00:21:51] Annette: I know.
[00:21:51] Sarah: There’s no escaping it. So yeah, you want heat treatment, exposing your bedding to very high heat.
[00:21:57] Annette: I know they’re called bedbugs, but can they get in your couch cushions and other furniture?
[00:22:03] Sarah: Yes, Annette.
[00:22:04] Annette: Okay, so what do you do about that?
[00:22:06] Sarah: So often the exterminators are very well trained in this. There are some companies that have bedbug sniffing dogs, and the dogs will sniff it out. But when we– at our property, Annette, when that guy came to check it out, he not only grabbed the bug from the bed, but he tore our entire town home apart looking for them. And he couldn’t find them anywhere. I mean, we didn’t have them, but–
[00:22:32] Annette: They will still look out.
[00:22:34] Sarah: They will not just look at the place where the activity was found. But they will inspect your entire property.
[00:22:39] Annette: They understand the bed, if we strip the linens– do you have to get rid of the mattress?
[00:22:43] Sarah: Okay. It’s a good question. We learned that hotel– not hotel. Marriott and Hilton require the mattress to be disposed of. If you decide to dispose of your mattress, please, put it in a mattress encasement and I would put a note on there saying there is bedbug infestation so that it can be taken care of properly. Again, the reason why these are these bugs are still an issue is because we keep kicking the problem down the road, honestly.
[00:23:08] Annette: So the next person that has to deal with it. Oh man, okay.
[00:23:11] Sarah: Yes. Now, every time I ever got them, and that was not because you didn’t get rid of your mattress. But no, I got them on very separate occasion, but I never threw out any of my things. And that’s something that I know a lot of companies champion is, don’t throw your stuff away. In most cases it can be treated.
But you have to remember too, these bugs, they multiply I think the number is by the hundreds every night. So the faster you act the better it is, and the quicker you get humans out of that home, which is their food source, I believe these bugs can also lay dormant for six months without feeding.
[00:23:43] Annette: What?
[00:23:44] Sarah: Right. So don’t put this problem off. Don’t dilly dally. Know what to do and who you’re going to call if and when it happens. So there’s two main methods for removing bedbugs in your property. And again, the company that you call will help most likely have a method that they prefer. So there’s a heat treatment which exposes the area to very, very high heat for a window of time.
[00:24:07] Annette: Scorch that place. Get it hot.
[00:24:08] Sarah: Yes. Now, this method is more expensive and a faster, uh, method for moving the bug, but not as effective in killing all their various life cycles. Because I mentioned these bugs lay eggs, I think, every day. And so oftentimes the eggs aren’t subject to the heat.
[00:24:27] Annette: They can resist it.
[00:24:27] Sarah: They can resist the heat, which is why the insecticide treatment, typically more effective, longer downtime, requires a reinspection and a possible respray. But it’s better at catching the bugs that are in their larva stage. How’s everyone feeling? Is everyone okay?
[00:24:47] Annette: I got a lot of things going on in my head right now. But when they do this mass extinction of the bugs, well, I’m just wondering, do they all fall to the ground and you suck them up and remove them? Do you sweep? Where do they all go? Or just–
[00:25:04] Sarah: I don’t get paid enough to know that.
[00:25:05] Annette: I mean, I’m just going to put it out. Think about it. You kill all of them, but they’re still around the mattress or around the couch, where do they actually go? They just don’t evaporate.
[00:25:13] Sarah: No, I’m sure there’s those bedbugs’ skeletons to be picked up.
[00:25:17] Annette: I’ll have to go to the YouTubes or something for that.
[00:25:19] Sarah: Don’t do that. Because then it’s going to reserve up bedbug content. You don’t want that in I promise you. But again, the most important thing is containing. Contain, contain, contain and act fast.
[00:25:30] Annette: What I said earlier about taping up the HVAC, the vents, and the outlets, if you find them in a room, you should probably do that immediately also.
[00:25:37] Sarah: Suit up, aggressive lock gone, or whatever. So you suit up whoever your point of contact is, because it might not be your exterminator.
[00:25:42] Annette: Your husband can put on his Star Trek suit.
[00:25:45] Sarah: His Star Trek? No, he would never subject his uniform to that. No, but suit up. Have something that you can– a onesie, like we said, the shoes. Go in there, put the bedding that was on the bed where they saw activity in the dryer. Just put it for two hours, your longest setting. Tape up all the things, and then get out of the house and have your–
[00:26:05] Annette: To come in there.
[00:26:09] Sarah: So once the bedbug exterminator does their work, and again, there might be a re-treatment. I would say more often than not, there is a re-treatment. So if there’s two treatments, don’t feel bad about it. I would expect it. Do not accept bookings again until you get the okay from your exterminator.
[00:26:30] Annette: How long do you think that is?
[00:26:32] Sarah: I would say four to six weeks.
[00:26:34] Annette: Oh, dang.
[00:26:35] Sarah: Because you know what, these extermination companies were like, two weeks. No. Every time it’s ever happened to me, and even right now, again, our team member Colleen, who just left her hotel, commercial space, all the resources, they’re at week six in a one bedroom hotel room.
[00:26:50] Annette: And then are you required, once you have taken care of the issue, do you have to tell any guests moving forward?
[00:27:02] Sarah: That’s a good question. Now my–
[00:27:06] Annette: It’s like you don’t tell a guest, hey, someone partied here before and threw up in the–
[00:27:09] Sarah: Right. Someone died here before.
[00:27:11] Annette: Well, if you’re selling the house, you got to tell them.
[00:27:15] Sarah: Right. I mean, because it’s just like–
[00:27:17] Annette: And then it’s like how long do you disclose that?
[00:27:19] Sarah: That on your listing? Or when they book, they book instantly, hey, by the way–
[00:27:22] Annette: I’m just going to say, I mean, if you’ve taken care of it, if you’ve had this stamp of approval that it’s clear, it’s clear. I mean, because that’s the other thing too, is like, okay, what are you going to tell the next? Is anybody going to ever stay again? You can’t do that. then it’s like, oh, you tell the next two guests but after two weeks you don’t tell anybody anymore.
[00:27:37] Sarah: I’ll say this, I know a hotel will never do that. A hotel will never tell you, hey, this room was just being released back onto the market after getting me the okay from the exterminator. But I will tell you what I like to know so that I can refuse you to stay there, yes.
[00:27:49] Annette: So listeners, we’ll let you decide that for yourselves.
[00:27:50] Sarah: Yeah, I’m going to inquire–
[00:27:52] Annette: A lot of times they want to know.
[00:27:54] Sarah: Email Hyatt, thanksforvisiting.me, and let us know what you would do.
[00:27:57] Annette: Oh, my gosh. You just opened the flood gates on them.
[00:27:59] Sarah: But I want to know. I do.
[00:28:00] Annette: We opened the bug gates.
[00:28:02] Sarah: No, I do.
[00:28:02] Annette: Sorry, I had to say it. Wow. This is terrifying.
[00:28:05] Sarah: And if you’re wondering how much this can run you, let’s just say this, back in 2005, this was– how long ago is that now? Almost 20 years. It cost us $8,000.
[00:28:17] Annette: Ooh.
[00:28:19] Sarah: $8,000. And I wasn’t making money off my apartment, I was just living there.
[00:28:23] Annette: Right. It wasn’t revenue-generating. Ouch.
[00:28:25] Sarah: So I do know, and when I thought we had them, the guy who I asked was like, how much could this potentially run me? He goes, uh, for this 1,000 square feet, I think he said anywhere starting $2,500. So I would imagine that, but when you have laund– because then you have to, I mean–
[00:28:39] Annette: The labor involved of just–
[00:28:40] Sarah: Washing all, and I would wash all of your linens in your home.
[00:28:43] Annette: I mean everything.
[00:28:45] Sarah: Now, we prepped for this episode by going over some more commercial SOPs for getting bedbugs and also life experience. But what I didn’t find out is this, so that same guy that I called for our property, Annette, mentioned that there is a treatment you can put every quarter.
[00:29:03] Annette: A pre-treat? Oh, we should look on–
[00:29:05] Sarah: Part of me feels like, well, listen–
[00:29:07] Annette: That’s like them trying to make some money.
[00:29:09] Sarah: If a heat treatment and an insecticide can barely kill these things, what is this once a quarter stuff going to do? Is it just like a way to make extra money, revenue?
[00:29:20] Annette: And are they potentially– just my last question about the bugs, are different areas like warmer climates, colder climates, are different areas more receptible, I guess is what I’m trying to say? Is it more likely that certain areas would get them or do the bugs not discriminate on any territory either?
[00:29:38] Sarah: The only thing I can say to that is, again, they’re attracted to human blood, but number two, they often are very active in lower income areas because of how expensive they are to treat. It’s that terrible cycle of–
[00:29:52] Annette: Just not eradicating it.
[00:29:53] Sarah: Because they don’t have the tools necessary to. And they have landlords who don’t do those sorts of things. Or people just move out of their apartments and don’t take care of the issue. They bring them with them and they continue to spread these guys. So I don’t know about climate, but I do know about–
[00:30:08] Annette: The geography. You’re not going to find them more in one state than the other.
[00:30:11] Sarah: I don’t think so.
[00:30:13] Annette: Interesting.
[00:30:14] Sarah: Well, listeners, while this wasn’t the most glamorous episode, we hope that you can dial in your bedbug SOPs. Have an open conversation with your cleaning team and your inspectors. Let them know they should let you know anytime they see a bug.
[00:30:27] Annette: Yeah. I think that’s maybe the biggest takeaway is put some preventative things in place, and then also just communicate with your team if they ever see anything. Yeah, it’s definitely not a reflection of their work.
[00:30:37] Sarah: No. And call a company today, tomorrow, this week. Get a relationship. Figure out what you need to do if you ever found one or something like, would they come and identify it for sure, and what happens if it is. Just get all those things in place now. You’ll be thankful because it’s a very stressful time to go through, especially as a business owner. I mean, I’ve done it as a person just living in the place. I couldn’t imagine if it was a revenue–
[00:31:00] Annette: And then to chat with the guests.
[00:31:02] Sarah: Right. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.
[00:31:07] Annette: I’m Annette Grant, and together we are–
[00:31:08] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:31:09] Sarah: We’ll talk to you next time.
