428 Kentucky Hotel Bed Bug Reports Raise Concerns

You might want to check your bed before lying down the next time you stay at a Kentucky hotel.

You've most likely heard your parents say "sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite" when they tucked you into bed as a child. Nine times out of ten, bed bugs weren't something that people really had to worry about in their homes. Heck, you might have thought that it was just a dumb saying that your parents would just say for the fun of it. However, bed bugs are very real. According to Orkin:

Typically, bed bugs are 3/16 inch long, red to dark brown in color and are mostly nocturnal insects that come out of hiding to take blood meals from sleeping humans. These pests are hematophagous, which means blood is their only food source. They can travel from place to place with ease, clinging to items such as luggage, purses and other personal belongings.

 

So, this brings me to bed bugs in Kentucky hotels. If you're going on vacation in Kentucky and plan to stay in a hotel during your trip, there's a helpful site called Bed Bug Reports that allows anyone to anonymously share their experiences. You can search every single town and city in Kentucky, and their database will show you when and where bed bugs were found. Spoiler Alert: There are 428 bed bug reports all throughout the state of Kentucky. That's a lot!

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Since there's no way for me to 100% verify the validity of these claims, I won't share the exact hotels, but here are just a couple of recent reports in Kentucky:

Here's one from Florence:

12 Mar 2024, manager would only communicate with me thru email. Denied that I was bitten and sent a pest company report on 15 March that showed no bed bugs, I contacted the Northern Kentucky Health Department which inspected and found bed bugs on 18 March. If the health department had not informed me of their findings I would not have had confirmation as the hotel seemed to sweep it under the rug. I fought for a refund and eventually got one. The hotel and manager are not customer friendly.

And another example from Louisville:

On March 16th a friend booked me a room at this hotel. I was asleep and woke up to multiple bed bug bites. I saw and recorded the bed bugs on the bed. It was like I was being eaten alive .. The hotel has not reached out to me or anything after I reported it.

So, this site might be helpful for you whenever you are booking a stay at any Kentucky hotel and want to avoid having any issues like that. It should be noted that there have not been any reports thus far in 2025. Perhaps that means that Kentucky hotels have gotten the bed bug issues resolved, or it could simply be the fact that not too many people are aware of the website Bed Bug Reports. Either way, you will definitely want to check your hotel beds first. Bed Bug Reports recommends that you do the following after checking in:

1. Pick up the mattresses in the rooms and look under it. Check around the edges of the box springs.
2. Check under the box spring.
3. Lift up each headboard an lay it on the bed. Carefully inspect the hole where the headboard was lifted out of. Also, inspect all niches and corners of the headboard.
4. If you decide to stay in the hotel, do not put any clothes in dressers. Keep them in your luggage and your dirty clothes in plastic bags.

You can click here to learn more.