Rooms at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park start around $695 a night and can range up to $4,500. That may seem steep, but according to one maid, that price tag comes with plenty of extras, like parasites to relieve you of your blood free of charge. The worker, Rosanna Polanco, tells the Times that on Monday she was asked to service the room next to 1005, but she was not told what the problem was. Polanco says she only found out when she bumped into a worker from Ecolab Inc., which supplies cleaning products and pest elimination services.
The Ecolab worker told her, "Be careful. There’s a lot of bedbugs in there. Management didn’t tell me. I found out myself." Now Polanco is worried that she unwittingly brought bedbugs back to her home, because the little critters are notoriously adept at hitching rides in folds of clothing. As you read this, there's probably one or two crawling out of the computer screen and into your pockets right now. The Times reports that the hotel "offered to send professionals to her home to check for any infestation, though Ms. Polanco said no one had come as yet."
A manager at the hotel concedes that "one" bedbug was found in the unidentified room, and the hotel is now bedbug free. Also, whaddaya gonna do? "Bedbugs are inevitable," says the manager, correctly pointing out that these insidious bastards trot the globe in travelers' luggage. It comes as no surprise to those of us who stay up at night Googling bedbug horror stories that the Ritz-Carlton isn't the only tony hotel to host parasites. The Waldorf-Atoria, for one, has been hit with several lawsuits from guests who got bitten by bedbugs. And you'll recall that charming little mini bedbug hotels have been popping around town outside buildings with bedbugs.
