News
Spotta targets bed bugs in US hotels
May 17, 2022
Spotta’s AI-Powered IOT Platform lets hotel management teams spot bed bug outbreaks before they start so that they can focus on giving guests the best possible experience.
Spotta, a Cambridge, UK-based IoT pest management solution launched its US market presence targeting the hotel sector. Spotta has grown out of the world-renowned tech cluster surrounding the University of Cambridge in the UK. Their solutions use smart IoT monitoring devices, called Pods, to catch pest outbreaks before they start.
In the hotel sector, Spotta focuses on bed bugs. Spotta’s smart devices are placed in every hotel room and the software alerts the hotel management in real-time if a bed bug is in a room. This allows hotels to catch outbreaks before they start, saving them thousands of dollars in pest treatment costs, protecting their reputation, and keeping guests safe.
“With Spotta, hotels can catch bed bug outbreaks before they even start,” said Robert Fryers, CEO and Co-Founder of Spotta. “The hotel sector has had a rough time over the last few years. The combination of hygiene-focused guests and labour shortages for housekeeping means that they need new ways to manage pests like bed bugs. Spotta has already been proven to be highly effective in the UK and Europe and we’ve successfully launched with selected customers in the US. As of today, we’re opening up our services to the full US market.”
The conventional approach to managing bed bugs is to ask the housekeeping team to look out for them, alongside keeping a pest management company on retainer. The problem here is that at the best of times it can be tricky to spot bed bugs before a guest finds them. This situation is made worse by the national labour shortage. Housekeeping teams are expected to clean more rooms than ever before, meet stricter guidelines (due to COVID) than ever before, and do this all with fewer people.
“It’s an impossible situation for housekeeping for the hotel sector in general,” said Fryers. “Housekeeping simply cannot be your front line of defence against bed bugs anymore.”
Bed bugs are spread easily as they can catch a ride on travellers or in their luggage. For hotels, bed bugs are a perennial nuisance costing thousands of dollars and causing damage to reputations because guests don’t understand the way bed bugs spread and mistakenly assume that only lower-quality hotels suffer from them. According to a study conducted by Orkin, 98% of hotels have some bed bug prevention efforts in place, such as housekeeping inspections or even using dogs to identify bed bugs. The problem with these approaches is they don’t reliably catch outbreaks before guests find them. There’s also a high risk that the bugs will have spread to other rooms before being detected.
Spotta’s smart devices are placed discreetly under the hotel’s mattress, out of view of guests. The Bed Pod, as it’s called, releases a pheromone that’s only detected by bed bugs, drawing them inside and trapping them. Once inside, Spotta’s smart sensors determine if the captured insect is a bed bug or not. If it is a bed bug it will automatically alert the hotel management so they can call their pest controller and deal with the problem before guests are affected. Since Spotta operates 24/7 in every room it allows the hotel management to stay on top of bed bugs without taking up staff time.
