“Don’t let the bed bugs bite” turns out to be pretty good advice from an otherwise fairly meaningless nursery rhyme.
Bed bugs can not only be nasty creatures which can bite you and produce nasty welts, they’re also sneaky creatures. If you have bed bugs in a hotel, they can easily follow you home.
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That can create an expensive problem as bed bugs are also notoriously hard to get rid off. A bed bug infestation can spread and getting rid of it requires professionals.
Any hotel fears bed bugs, but the reality is that they’re impossible to avoid. The challenge is that the best cleaned hotels with the tightest protocols can’t control what their guests bring in.
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An infected guest can infect not only their room, but the tiny creatures can jump to other people and go from nuisance to infestation very quickly.Â
That makes the incidents of bed bug sightings on the Las Vegas Strip a little trick to categorize as there have been some, but many would argue that the city’s hotel operators have done a good job keeping the issue under control.
Any person visiting Las Vegas could bring bed bugs.
Image source: Shutterstock
Here’s what bed bugs are and what they can do
“Bed bugs (Cimex species) are small, flat insects. Bed bugs bite people and animals at night while they sleep, feeding on their blood. Bed bugs are reddish-brown in color, are wingless, and range from 1mm to 7mm in size (roughly the size of Lincoln’s head on a penny). They can live several months without a blood meal,” according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
On the positive side, bed bugs are not known to spread disease. However, they cause irritation, itching, and loss off sleep.Â
It’s not always easy to know when you have been bit and different people have varying reactions.
“When bed bugs bite, they inject fluids (anesthetic and anticoagulant) that prevents a person from feeling the bite when it happens. Most people do not notice the bite marks until they appear from one to several days after the initial bite,” according to the CDC.
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Bites look similar to mosquito or flea bites — a slightly swollen and red area that may itch and be irritating. The bite marks may be random or appear in a straight line, according to the agency.
Las Vegas Strip’s biggest problem is perception
While multiple lawsuits have been filed over the presence of bed bugs on the Las Vegas Strip, the actual numbers seem pretty small. After a recent bed bug report at MGM Resorts International’s MGM Luxor and Treasure Island, 19 total cases have been reported since 2021, according to a Casino.org report.
Luxor has been sued over two separate bed bug incidents one involving Stephen and Courtney Gully of Illinois, who stayed at the hotel from June 7 to June 10, 2024, and another from Brianna McKenzie, who stayed on property from July 16 to July 18, 2024.
Courtney Gully sued over claims that her reaction to the bites included her throat closing which required a hospital visit.
In separate incidents bed bugs have been reported at the Bellagio, Cosmopolitan, Resorts World, and Hilton Grand Vacation Club from February through August 2024, according to a report by the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD). Incidents have also been reported at
Caesars Palace, Circus Circus, Encore, Excalibur, MGM Grand, Mirage, Palazzo, Park MGM, Planet Hollywood, Sahara, The Strat, the now defunct Tropicana, and Venetian.
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In reality, it seems that the Las Vegas Strip has done a good job controlling bed bugs. 21 is a very small number of a 5-year period, and while some people will say one is too many, those people aren’t living in the practical world.
Incidents like what happened to Courtney Gully are unfortunate, but also relatively isolated.
But, in many ways bed bugs are like plane crashes or ships sinking. Every incident becomes magnified because of the horrible impact.
