We’d want to consult a more authoritative source than Yelp if we had to write about this topic with any degree of authority, but the Southern Nevada Health District doesn’t monitor bedbug infestations unless hotels self-report. "That’s not information we routinely have. Bedbugs are an ongoing problem," said a SNHD spokeswoman. "Guests might bring them in with their luggage." She adds that Health District regulations require that hotels maintain clean rooms.
Boyd Gaming spokesman David Strow outlines the standard procedure for extirpating bedbugs, if discovered: The affected room is closed immediately. If the in-house exterminator finds evidence of bedbugs, the rooms on each side – as well as above and below – are also closed, then searched. "You keep going [outward] until you don’t find any issues," Strow reports, adding that the rooms are re-inspected before being reopened.
"You have to be constantly vigilant, so we’ve trained all of our staff to look for the bugs themselves," Strow continues, as well as for the telltale 'inkspots' they leave in their trail. Customers are also encouraged to contact management immediately if they have insect issues, and to have their luggage and its contents heated to 120 degrees, which kills the nasty little critters (and their larvae).
Since the SNHD doesn’t report bug infestations, consumers are forced to fall back on the anecdotal account of sites like Yelp.com. There, one can find accounts ranging from finding just one bedbug (Bally's Las Vegas) to waking up with 50 to 100 bedbug bites (Hampton Inn Tropicana). Although today's Question of the Day correspondent and his wife frequently stay in Las Vegas hotels, we have never encountered bedbugs and would be skeptical of reports of a widespread infestation.
However, if you want to err on the side of caution, there’s this site, bedbugregistry.com. Some hotels rack up a lot of demerits – Mandalay Bay had a bad 2012 – while others, like Red Rock Resort and Royal Resort, have a clean bill of health. The reports seem to peak two years ago and then taper off. The Palms has only one report, three years old, but The Orleans seems to log several complaints annually. Remember, however, that this site is group-sourced, not a systemic account of bedbugs in Las Vegas – and not a comprehensive list of Sin City’s hotels, either, so take its reportage with a grain of salt. Bedbugs are a risk one runs in even the finest hotels and, unlike kitchens that get shut down by the Health District for health and hygiene violations, are not necessarily indicative of any negligence or poor maintenance on the part of the property. As the SNHD spokeswoman we quoted above pointed out, it's likely to have been the previous occupant of the room who introduced them and you should not feel an extra degree of trepidation about visiting Las Vegas as opposed to any other hotel destination. Think on the bright side: Fleas and ticks are not indigenous to Southern Nevada -- it's too hot and the humidity is too low to sustain them, although it's a myth that we're entirely flea- and tick-free, since the little buggers are able to survive a car trip from California, for example.
Meanwhile, bugs took a break from bothering hotel goers this summer to descend upon Burning Man Festival, Nevada’s annual orgy of radical self-reliance. "You may have seen the bug rumors on the Internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you," Burning Man organizer Jacob Curley candidly warned potential festival-goers just ahead of the event.
University of Hawaii entomologist Karl Magnacca identified two of the strains as species of Miridae, a.k.a. stinkbugs, which "release a terrible smell, and they like to poke their probiscises into people’s skin. Which hurts. But they’re actually not attacking — a probiscis is more like a long, hollow tongue. These are desert bugs, and they look for water everywhere, including in your skin," reported Gizmondo.com. The bigger, green bugs were identified as Pentatomidae, an insect which doesn’t like being disturbed – their stink is a sign of displeasure.
After a week, the stink bugs – which reportedly smelled like coriander -- vanished as mysteriously as they had come but they left quite an impression. Reported Curley on the Burning Man blog, "the heat and the dryness have taken their toll. Larger insects came along, too, and there were plenty of smaller bugs for them to eat. Yesterday morning, we saw a small flock of birds down by the Depot, no doubt drawn to the area by the plentiful insect diet." He counseled Burning Man attendees, "Sure, throw in some bug spray, because you never know, it could happen again." Burning Man also had a theory for the mysterious infestation: "Due to unseasonably wet weather, the grass on the hills is unusually verdant, and that’s resulted in more bugs showing up in the desert than usual." [As an aside, QoD's other usual correspondent recalls a similar situation in her native UK back in the late '70s. An unusually hot summer produced a plague of aphids, which in turn spawned a plague of ladybugs. Once they'd eaten all the aphids, the ladybugs began devouring human flesh... But, as with the "Great Burning Man Stinkbug Infestation of 2015," our ladybug -- or ladybird, as we actually call them on the other side of The Pond -- invasion evaporated just as rapidly and mysteriously as it had descended upon us.]
(In another aside, the insect invasion may have been less vexatious to Burning Man Festival overseers than were the demands by Bureau of Land Management staff who patrolled the event. They wanted their own freezer, stocked with Chaco Taco ice cream, to say nothing of Blue Pit movable living facilities that contained toilets, a laundry and "container apartments." The wish list prompted Nevada congressman Mark Amodei to accuse the BLM of requesting "the Black Rock Desert version of the Four Seasons hotel" -- so perhaps those stinkbugs were an act of divine/pagan retribution...)
