As I said above, the study mentioned covered the period 2002-2006. Clearly, bed bugs have spread a lot since then (see any news article and you’ll find every city and town has PCOs attesting to this).

I don’t know the specifics of the research study done, but since it was done by a pest control industry company, it would be to their benefit, one would assume, to find as high a percentage of rooms infested as they were able to at the time.

See the trackback just below this comment: 8% of Tripadvisor users claim to have encountered bed bugs at least once. (Note: obviously, more would have encountered them and had no idea; some would likely also have had false alarms: mistaken another insect for bed bugs, unexplained and unconfirmed itching, etc.)

Still, your high incidence of bed bugs in hotel rooms seems very high to me. I also travel a lot and have stayed in many hotel rooms, from low-mid-range to upper-mid-range in quality, since beginning to search for bed bugs. I had one suspected encounter, but no definite visual evidence. (One bite thought to be bed bugs.) I picked most of them after some research (on TripAdvisor.com no less), but this will take you only so far.

I would not use my experience as the basis of an assessment of the incidence of bed bugs in hotel rooms, but I wouldn’t use yours either.

2 stays at 2 different hotels, each allowed me to inspect the rooms and I had to inspect 2 rooms before finding a third room where I couldn’t surmize any bedbugs; then again, I could have just been exhausted from the search too. I think the problem is BIGGER than reported.