Paris bedbugs: Does tech offer the solution to save travel?

Nothing is quite worse
than waking up on vacation to find you have unwanted company in your hotel
room. And some travelers have been experiencing just that as Paris has entered
a bedbug
hysteria — with other cities fearing a spread as the itty-bitty pests can be carried home. 

“They are horrible and can
destroy a vacation — not only through bites but getting into clothes and
luggage to be transported elsewhere,” said Robert Cole, Phocuswright senior research analyst for lodging and
leisure travel, who has personal
experience with bedbugs in hotels.

While travelers can take
some measures to protect themselves, tech companies are working on the problem and believe they could represent the future of bedbug control.

Choosing
a new way to battle the bugs is important, said Martim
Gois, founder of bedbug
smart tech company Valpas.

“Bedbugs have been on the planet since dinosaurs — long before beds,” he said in an interview with PhocusWire. “If
we try to control them stubbornly how we have until now, with pesticides they
have become resistant to and that are applied after they have already spread,
what’s happening in Paris is bound to happen worldwide soon.” 

Pest
prevention tech company Spotta founder and CEO Robert Fryers agreed that fighting pests
like bedbugs can be made more cost-effective with technology.

“Insect
pests are a massive and largely unrecognized challenge, costing [half a
trillion dollars] every year,” Fryers wrote on the company’s website. “High
intensity insecticide pesticide use can’t carry on. We’re bringing advanced
technology to make a step change in the sustainability and cost-effectiveness
of how the world manage insect pests.”

Here’s what to know about
how technology can help with bedbugs and who is using technology to fight the
pests that are causing a ruckus abroad.

What companies are using
technology to fight bedbugs?

While it’s more common to
use an exterminator or pesticides, companies like Valpas, Spotta and Delta Five are leveraging technology to fight bedbugs. 

Some are on a mission to
spread the use of tech to stop bedbugs. Valpas
launched a petition last week in an effort to convince Paris’ mayor to promote
the use of bedbug prevention technology at hotels and rentals over the use of
reactive pesticides.

How are startups using
tech to fight bedbugs?

Valpas, Spotta and Delta
Five may have a common enemy – but their manners of combat have slight
differences.

Valpas uses smart hotel
bed legs to collect bedbugs not long after they arrive in a space. If bugs are
detected, hotel staff are notified by smartphone and employees can be sent to
the room to empty the legs — thus avoiding a problem given bedbug infestations
start small, the company said.

Delta Five uses an electronic lure it calls an “e-Lure,” which is placed at the head of the
bed to attract and trap bedbugs. The device is odorless and operates in
silence, per the Delta Five website. Once alerted, hotel staff can empty the device.

Meanwhile, Spotta focuses
on more than bedbugs – the company uses smart pods that can be placed anywhere
to detect and report insects using advanced image recognition algorithms, Fryers said in a video on
Spotta’s website. In the clip, Spotta shows a pod being placed under a
mattress. 

“It attracts the bugs in
with a pheromone, where it’s then detected by our sensors,” Fryers said. “If the algorithms identify it as a bedbug, the system sends
an email alert so the property owner can take action before anyone is bitten.”

Fryers said the device –
part of Spotta’s “AI-powered insect detection system for bedbugs” is about the
size of a pack of cards and can be placed wherever bedbugs might be present –
in a hospital, cinema, hotel – list goes on.

What advantages does tech
have over traditional methods?

Most traditional methods
of mitigation are applied after bedbug “infections” — too late to stop the “physical,
mental, material and financial damage” that can occur, said Gois.

“They are mostly
pesticide-based and bear a high environmental footprint,” he added. 

Fryers sees technology as the only option to fight bedbugs: “Technology is the only affordable, scalable solution here.  People use manual inspections and dogs, and they can both be great, but they aren’t scalable,” he said.

How many hotels are
implementing anti-bedbug technology?

Gois said Valpas has 60
“bedbug safe” hotels it partners with in Paris, which are recognizable with
the Valpas “bedbug safe” label that informs travelers those hotel operators
are using Valpas for “permanent bedbug safety” in every room. Across the
globe, Valpas is in 220 hotels, he added, noting the company has plans to
onboard an additional 40 locations by end of year.

Delta Five advertises on
its website that its technology is installed in “thousands” of hotel rooms.

Spotta’s Fryers said on its
website
that the company has been working with
businesses and governments around the world to prevent pests liked bedbugs in
hotels – and also is working in agriculture and in forests to prevent other
types of infestations.

“We’ve protected over 1 million room nights across Europe and North America,” Fryers said.

Using tech to stop bedbugs isn’t a go-to option for hoteliers – at least not
yet

The option to subscribe to
a tech firm like Valpas, though, doesn’t make sense for every hotelier, per
Cole’s analysis. 

“I was aware of Valpas and
am a fan, but it’s not cheap. If in a city like [New York] or Paris, it makes
sense,” he said. “The lower the hotel rate and the rarer the bedbug incidents,
owners will resist the cost.”

Given bedbugs’ longevity,
Gois is betting the hotel brands that invest in tech prevention will benefit in
the long run.

“Hoteliers
that seize the moment and make their brands bedbug-safe and pesticide-free will
win loyal business, until what will eventually become standard compliance,” he
said.

Eventually, Cole
believes technology could serve a primary mitigation effort in the long
term.

“I’m no expert, but this is an entomological issue, and it’s hard to fight the solution adaptability
of insects,” Cole said. “I see it as a persistent long-term issue, with the
solution being technology, probably these [internet of things] devices that attract, capture and
keep statistics on these little devils.”

But all that aside – bedbugs might still have the upper
hand. “Look at it like cockroaches,” Cole said. “They were around a long time
before humans and will probably be here a long time after we’re long gone.”