This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.
Odds are, you’ve heard it already and it made you squirm just a little: Bedbugs are multiplying across France. Last year, there was a 65% increase in pest control visits, according to France’s Union Chamber of Insect Control.
A French agency also finds that roughly one in 10 French households reported a bedbug infestation between 2017 and 2022. Bedbugs are a nightmare any time, but the issue is coming to a head as Paris — the most visited city in the world — is slated to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. (And the games are expected to attract some 15 million attendees.)
The surge of bedbugs in France occurred before Paris Fashion Week last October — which is when fashion commentator and influencer Malvika Sheth got bitten.
“I got out of bed and I saw some red bumps on my feet and on my legs. These weren’t swelling up,” she explained. “They were staying the same size, but they were even itchier than I’ve ever experienced.”
Bedbugs are tiny creatures a bit smaller than a grain of rice that can travel on clothes and luggage. They like to live in beds, where they can bite humans at night.
Despite being small in size, the costs associated with bedbugs can be quite large. French households spend an average of $950 to exterminate the pests. And the creepy crawling creatures can pose a serious problem for hotel owners too.
“We had the detection of the bedbug, I want to tell you it’s frightening,” said Max Malka, who runs a hotel on the southern outskirts of Paris.
He’s invested in a type of bug detection technology called Spotta, which is developed in Cambridge, England.
Walk through the labs and you’ll see various bugs in wide test tubes, all of which have red sacks underneath them. “So that is the blood that we feed them,” said Spotta CEO and co-founder Robert Fryers. “Bedbugs only eat blood.”
Spotta’s bug detection system consists of a small white plastic box, which can be placed under mattresses. It contains a pheromone chemical that attracts and traps bugs. A camera inside the box takes a picture of anything that crawls in, which is then sent to the lab in Cambridge. They confirm whether or not it’s a bedbug and alert the hotel owner, who will begin treatment.
According to Fryers, there’s been a substantial rise in confirmed bed bug reports.
“We had a couple of years during COVID where people weren’t traveling around as much, and, therefore, there wasn’t so much transmission of bedbugs,” he said. “But the long-term trend has been steadily upwards for the last decade — and that’s going to continue.”
Other ways of detecting bedbugs include traps and sniffer dogs. It’s yet another cost for the hospitality sector still rebounding from COVID-19. But hotel owner Max Malka said it’s a necessary one.
“That reason we invested into this technology is first a service to the customer; second, a reputation of the hotel; and third, this will eliminate the risk of somebody suing us because he or she were bitten,” he said.
Bedbug bites and litigation — two souvenirs that nobody wants from this year’s Paris Olympics.
