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new news angle
(3 posts)-
Hi everyone,
On a happy note we modelled what we expect to see as a result of the 2012 Olympics in London the other week and one of the newspapers interviewed me about it.
The article is here, hopefully they will heed the warning and get proactive about the issue.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/posts/view/83809/2012-Games-face-bed-bugs-plague/
However I fear that is too much to hope for.
David Cain
Bed Bugs Limited -
BeenBitten
junior member
Joined: Mar '09
Posts: 39
Posted 5 months ago
Sun Jun 7 2009 17:49:34
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hey, ye its great their making the public aware of the situation. I never thought in a million years somethin like this exists and how much its effected my life :(
Anyway, when they say "it will cost the economy 250million pounds" does that mean pest controllers in total? or are they finally investing in a new solution to get rid of the bugs once and for all :O
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Hi,
The figure is £250 million is based on the conservative estimate of what bed bugs cost Australia post Olympics. The exact equation is in one of Stephen Doggett's papers where he calculated an estimated $100M AUD figure in terms of actual costs to affected hotels and losses in tourism.
The increased figure is given because the problem has grown so dramatically in the last few years that with a larger influx will come increased numbers of infestations and therefore increased costs.
The cost to make all London hotels proactive in bed bugs control would in contrast be in the region of £50 million annually at current costs and maybe a little less by 2012.
However the biggest issue is getting establishments to accept that the problem is in fact bigger than just the rooms they are aware of. In a recent screening study we started off knowing about 5 rooms and ended up identifying about 15 in less than 1,000 rooms. The cost to go proactive was about £15,000 compared to the £50,000 in lossed revenue (year to date) and the projected £175,000 it could have cost them had they all infestations remained undetected till they reached the same levels as the ones they were aware of.
I have done some advanced analysis of the costs in such environments in the last few weeks and the cost of getting this wrong can be devastating to a business small or large and the margin for error is so small. I will be announcing some of these findings on new website in a few weeks once we have finished writing and formatting it. I think the day when travellers start enquiring about an establishments BB policies before booking is getting closer and closer. At this stage though even the few that really stay on top of the issue do not want to break ranks and disclose that they even are aware of the issue.
Give me a few weeks and I will give you some new tools to use but they will only be effective if all travellers are encouraged to use it.
It would also be extremely helpful if someone with a more physics and electronics background could make me a device to stretch time a little just 10% or 15% would do for a start.
David
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