Reddit/Trqnx.A romantic evening turned into an horrific ordeal for one young couple after claiming to find bed bugs and cockroaches in their hotel room.
According to a report on yahoo!news, the pair discovered the alleged infestation at the Park Regis North Quay in Brisbane.
Quoted in the story, Melbourne-based Ben said he booked the romantic stay to reconnect with his girlfriend who lives in Brisbane.
He said they first noticed a cockroach in the living room around midnight when they were relaxing on the sofa eating chocolate.
When they left some of the chocolate on the sofa, two cockroaches appeared. He said that for the next hour they were “ripping apart the sofa trying to catch the bugs”.
When they moved to the bedroom, the pair claim to have seen and killed a large bed bug and on stripping back the covers saw “a few black dots”. Unable to reach hotel staff at such a late hour, the young couple decided to spend the night sleeping on lounges in the lobby.
Photos of the bugs posted on the yahoo!news site seem to support the couple’s claims but the hotel deny they have a problem, with a spokesman saying “they could have been brought into the room by the traveller”.
Richard Doyle, Group General Counsel for StayWell Holdings, which manages Park Regis hotels, told Yahoo News Australia that “bedbugs usually travel in people’s clothes and luggage”.
Ben, who moved to Australia from the UK a year ago, said he’d travelled from his unit in Melbourne where he had no issues, denying claims he’d been “backpacking” and likely brought the bugs home with him.
The hotel called in a pest inspector to investigate the claims and Ben has since been offered a full refund.
“We are a well-respected company. We’ve been operating this particular hotel since 2007. We’ve had zero bed bug complaints since 2007 and very few complaints about the state of our rooms,” added Mr Doyle.
The incident comes as health officials warn of a “bed bug plague” following problems in Paris and with Aussie travellers returning home.
Park Regis North Quay has been contacted for comment.
