5 Tips For Keeping Rodents Away From Your Hotel
For hotels and lodgings of all sizes - from international hotel chains to local neighborhood bed and breakfasts - rodents pose a serious threat to not only a business’s reputation, but its bottom line.
Even one sighting of a mouse dashing across the lobby or leaving droppings in a room can bring ramifications that can last for years. That’s why keeping mice, rats, and other rodents as far from guest spaces as possible is critical for any lodging business.
Fortunately, keeping rodents away from your hotel doesn’t have to be difficult. By following these simple, proactive, proven pest-prevention methods, any hotel owner or operator can ensure all guests can enjoy their stay without ever having to worry about rodents.
1. Stay Vigilant and Watch For Signs of Infestation
While perhaps the most obvious prevention step in any hotel owner’s arsenal, simply keeping a close eye on your property for any signs of rodents remains a crucial element in identifying and addressing pest problems before they affect guests.
Some early indicators of mice or other rodents in your hotel may include droppings left around baseboards, in closets, or around hidden areas like the back of pantries or cabinets.
A simple cursory glance around these areas with a flashlight, done regularly, can help identify and ultimately quarantine rodents before they get the chance to spread throughout your property. This can help you decide exactly where action is needed, and to take action without delay.
2. Securely Seal Off Any Rodent Entrance Points
Rodents are notoriously skilled at entering through even the tiniest of available openings, and can fit through a crack or gap only a few inches wide to get where they’re going.
That’s why it’s critical to fully inspect your property for any potential cracks or openings, and to work with a professional to fully seal up any entrances rodents might use to get inside. In some cases, this may mean inspecting all doors and windows in your property for gaps, or looking around your foundation for cracks or damage where rodents may slip in.
Another often-overlooked entrance point for rodents can be heating, ventilation, and electrical ductwork or wiring. Often connected to vents or pipes leading in and out of your building, these hidden systems can quickly become an easy highway for rodent entrance is not kept securely sealed off.
In many cases, an experienced pest prevention expert can help identify vulnerabilities in your system and take action to secure them from outside invaders.
3. Keep Food Crumbs and Standing Water to a Minimum
Like many other pests plaguing the hospitality industry, rodents come into hotels looking for just a few things: warmth, food, and water. While there may not be much hotel owners can do about the former, keeping the latter two out of the reach of rodents can be a seriously effective method at keeping them away in the first place.
Any hotel with a kitchen, eating area, or food service area should pay especially close attention to those spaces for signs of food droppings or crumbs left out for easy picking. Additionally, trash and garbage areas should be secured and cleaned frequently to prevent hungry rodents from finding their way to an easy snack.
Standing water can also be a draw for rodents looking for a reliable source of drinking water near their nest. This can come from several sources, including leaky pipes around bathrooms and kitchens or air conditioning units. Because many sources can remain out of sight, these should be inspected regularly to ensure no leaks are offering a source of water for thirsty rodents.
4. Educate Staff on Proper Prevention Strategies
Regardless of how large your hotel may be or how many team members you may employ, your staff is always the front line in your defense against rodents. That’s why it’s critical to keep your staff members educated on the early signs of pest problems, and empowered to speak out and raise the alarm internally when a rodent infestation is suspected.
Regular training sessions with the help of an experienced pest professional, as well as a streamlined onboarding program for new team members, can offer a serious boost to your pest prevention efforts. By keeping staff fully informed of what to look for and what to do is they spot signs of an infestation, you can more easily ensure a swift and discrete response to any pest problem that may occur in your hotel.
5. Work With An Experienced Pest Prevention Professional
As effective as even the best reactive pest prevention strategies may be, the true secret to keeping rodents and other pests away from your hotel and your guests may be proactive measures. For many business owners, that means working with an experienced pest professional.
An experienced rodent prevention specialist can help to not only identify weak points in your prevention strategy, but also take concrete steps to preemptively stop mice and other rodents from making their way inside. Bringing a wide variety of expertise to each property, a rodent prevention expert can help secure your property from rodent invasions all year long, and will check in regularly to measure your strategy effectiveness as time goes by.
If you’re looking for a way to keep your hotel or extended-stay property free from rodent invasions moving into the busy holiday season, get in touch with our team at JP Pest Services. We’ll work with your staff to make sure your guests never have to cross paths with a rodent during their stay.
