Summer travel is exciting — until you bring something home you didn't pack. Here's what every NYC traveler should know about bed bugs before and after their trip.
You packed light, had a great trip, and made it back to Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Queens without losing your luggage. What you might not realize is that something could have followed you home anyway. Bed bug introductions through travel are one of the most common ways infestations start in NYC apartments, and the summer months are when the risk peaks. We’ve been handling bed bug calls across the five boroughs for over 50 years, and every summer, the pattern is the same: someone returns from a trip, notices something a week or two later, and by then the bugs have already started settling in. Here’s what you actually need to know.
Yelp’s Summer Infestation Index found that nationwide searches for bed bug extermination rose 53% between May 2024 and April 2025. That’s not a blip — it’s a trend that’s been building since travel rebounded after COVID, and Terminix has documented a consistent increase in bed bug service calls over the same period.
NYC sits at the center of this for a few reasons. Tens of millions of visitors pass through the city every year, which means hotels across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens are constantly cycling through guests who’ve come from all over the world. JFK and LaGuardia are two of the busiest international gateways in the country. When travelers bring bed bugs into the city — or take them home — the dense housing stock means the bugs can spread fast.
Most of New York City’s housing stock — especially in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Flatbush, Bed-Stuy, and Bushwick — consists of pre-war multi-family buildings. Shared walls, shared plumbing chases, shared heating systems. That infrastructure, which gives these buildings so much character, also gives bed bugs a highway between units.
Brooklyn consistently ranks first among all NYC boroughs for bed bug infestations, and Flatbush has the highest concentration of any Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s not a coincidence. It’s density plus aging building stock plus a constant flow of travel through one of the most connected cities in the world.
In Queens, the proximity to JFK and LaGuardia creates a uniquely high exposure risk. Residents who travel frequently for work or leisure, or who live near hotels serving international arrivals, are dealing with a reintroduction vector that simply doesn’t exist in most other markets. In Manhattan, the problem concentrates differently — Midtown’s hotel density means even well-reviewed, four-star properties have faced bed bug complaints. Bed bugs don’t care about the thread count on the sheets.
What makes this particularly tricky is timing. A bed bug introduction event — sitting in an infested hotel room, setting your luggage on an infested rack, picking something up on the subway — doesn’t announce itself. Bites often don’t appear for days or even weeks. By the time you notice something, the bugs may have already spread from your suitcase to your bedroom.
A fed bed bug can survive 135 to 277 days without another meal, which means even a small number of hitchhikers can establish a serious infestation over time. Female bed bugs lay five to eight eggs per week. A minor problem left unaddressed for a month is a very different situation than one caught early. In a multi-unit building, that timeline matters even more — because what starts in your apartment doesn’t necessarily stay there.
The single most effective thing you can do while traveling is inspect your room before you put anything down. Set your luggage in the bathroom — on the tile floor or in the tub — while you do a quick check.
Bed bugs hide in the seams of mattresses, along the headboard, behind picture frames, and in the folds of upholstered furniture. Pull back the bedding and look at the mattress seams for rust-colored spots, small black dots, or what looks like tiny grains of rice — those are the bugs, their droppings, and their eggs.
Use the luggage rack if the room has one, but inspect it first. Never put your bag on the bed or on upholstered furniture. If you find signs of an infestation — or even something you’re not sure about — notify hotel management immediately and ask for a different room, ideally not adjacent to the original one, since bugs can move through shared walls.
When you get home, don’t bring your luggage straight into the bedroom. Unpack outside, in the hallway, or directly into the laundry. Washing clothes in hot water and drying them on high heat for at least 30 minutes kills bed bugs at all life stages. Items that can’t be washed can go through a hot dryer cycle on their own. For anything that can’t be laundered, sealing it in a plastic bag and leaving it in a hot car or storage area can help, but that’s not a substitute for professional inspection if you have real concerns.
One thing that trips people up: the idea that only cheap hotels have bed bugs. Budget properties near transit hubs in Queens or Midtown do face more frequent introduction events simply because of turnover volume — but any property with high guest churn is a potential exposure point, regardless of its star rating.
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If you’ve returned from a trip and you’re seeing bites, finding small dark spots on your mattress, or just have a feeling something isn’t right — don’t wait. The instinct to hope it’s a mosquito or a rash is understandable, but in a city like New York, where buildings are connected and neighbors are close, waiting costs you time you don’t have.
The first call should be to a certified bed bug specialist — not a general exterminator who handles bed bugs as one item on a long menu. The most common reason bed bug treatment fails is incomplete inspection, and that risk goes up significantly when the technician isn’t specifically trained for it.
A thorough inspection goes well beyond the mattress. Bed bugs establish themselves in baseboards, electrical outlets, behind wall plates, inside box springs, in the joints of bed frames, and along the edges of carpeting. In older Brooklyn and Queens apartments — the kind with original plaster walls and exposed pipe runs — there are even more places for them to hide.
When we inspect a home, we’re looking at the full picture: where the bugs are, how established the infestation is, and whether there’s any indication it’s already moving to adjacent rooms or units. In a multi-family building, that last part matters a great deal.
NYC’s Local Law 69 of 2017 requires property owners to document bed bug infestation history and file annual reports with HPD — which means a confirmed infestation in your unit can have real implications for your landlord, and vice versa. If you’ve received an HPD bed bug violation, or your landlord has, the treatment needs to be documented properly in order to clear it with the city. We handle that as part of the process.
Before any treatment begins, you’ll have a clear plan in front of you — what we’re going to do, in what order, and what it will cost. No surprises, no pressure to add services that aren’t necessary. That’s been our approach for over 50 years, and it’s why clients call us back when something new comes up rather than starting over with someone else.
This is one of the most common questions we get, and the honest answer is: it depends on the situation, which is exactly why we use both.
Heat treatment — also called thermal remediation — works by raising the temperature in an infested space to a level that kills bed bugs at every life stage, including eggs. It’s considered the gold standard in the industry because it doesn’t leave chemical residue, it penetrates deep into furniture and wall voids, and it doesn’t give the bugs anywhere to hide. For a severe infestation, or one that’s spread through multiple rooms, heat is often the most thorough single-pass option.
Chemical treatment uses NYS DEC-registered materials applied to targeted areas. These materials are safe for children, pets, and elderly family members when applied correctly, and they provide residual protection that heat treatment alone doesn’t offer — meaning they continue working after the initial application. For many infestations, particularly those caught early, a well-executed chemical treatment with proper follow-up is highly effective.
The reason we offer both is that bed bugs don’t follow a script. An infestation in a Flatbush brownstone with shared walls and original plaster looks different from one in a Manhattan high-rise or a newer Queens apartment building. The treatment plan should reflect the actual situation — the size of the infestation, the type of unit, whether there’s reason to believe it’s spreading, and what the household’s specific needs are.
What doesn’t work: store-bought sprays. Bed bugs are resistant to most commercial pesticides. Products available at hardware stores are not formulated to penetrate the hiding spots where bed bugs actually live and breed, and they have no effect on eggs. People who try to handle it themselves often displace the bugs rather than eliminate them, which can actually make the infestation harder to treat later.
Follow-up visits are part of our plan — not because we’re padding a bill, but because bed bug eggs can survive an initial treatment and hatch days later. Catching that second generation before it can reproduce is what separates a resolved infestation from a recurring one.
If you’re back from a trip and something feels off — trust that instinct. The earlier a bed bug problem is caught, the easier it is to resolve, and the less likely it is to spread to neighboring units in your building.
You don’t need to wait until you have a confirmed sighting. An inspection after travel is a reasonable precaution, especially if you stayed somewhere with mixed reviews, noticed anything unusual in the room, or are simply dealing with unexplained bites. Peace of mind has real value when the alternative is weeks of uncertainty in a city where infestations can escalate quickly.
Kingsway Exterminating has been handling bed bug calls across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens for over 50 years. We’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can typically schedule an appointment within two days — often the same day. If you think you’ve got a problem, or you just want to be sure you don’t, give us a call.
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