There was something in the bed.

The strongest hotel claim there is, and the one most often thrown away in the twenty minutes between finding them and being quietly moved upstairs.

Read this first

Report it in writing before you leave the room

Photograph first, then go to the desk and ask them to email you, while you are standing there, confirming the room number, the issue reported and the time you reported it. Properties often write that down because in the moment it reads as procedural, and it becomes the best document in your file. Do not let them move you on a verbal promise: an unrecorded room change is how a documented infestation turns into an unverifiable one six weeks later. If they will not put it in writing, write it yourself and send it from the lobby, addressed to a named manager. An unchallenged written account becomes the record.

What you are owed

A refund for the nights you could not use

You paid for accommodation. A verminous bed is not the thing that was sold, and that is a plain failure of what you contracted for. Be accurate about scale: if they moved you promptly to a clean room on another floor and the rest of the stay was fine, the honest claim is the affected night plus your costs, not the whole booking. If you left, it is the whole booking.

Everything the infestation forced you to spend

The difference in cost of the replacement hotel, transport to it, laundry or professional heat treatment of your clothing and luggage, and documented medical costs if you were actually assessed. Receipts only. Do not invent a distress figure, because an inflated number invites a refusal of the entire claim.

A route that does not run through their goodwill

If you paid by card, the dispute ground is services not as described, which is the most commonly upheld category there is. In the UK, a credit card purchase over 100 pounds also engages Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which makes the issuer jointly liable and is stronger than a chargeback. Section 75 covers a cash price over 100 pounds and up to 30,000, and it requires a direct link between you, your card issuer and the supplier: where you paid a booking site rather than the hotel or airline itself, issuers frequently decline on that ground. Keep the chargeback route running in parallel rather than relying on Section 75 alone.; debit cards use the chargeback scheme instead. If you paid cash or by bank transfer there is no dispute route at all, and you should never write the word chargeback into a letter you cannot follow through on. Lean on the health authority, the consumer regulator and, for a branded property, corporate.

How they will refuse, and what answers it

“No other guest has reported this.”

That says nothing about what you found. Ask them to confirm in writing the date of the last pest inspection of that specific room and the name of the licensed contractor who carried it out. That single question is usually where the tone of the correspondence changes.

“Those bites could have come from anywhere.”

They are right, which is exactly why bites are not your claim. Reactions vary enormously and other things bite. The evidence is in the mattress seams, the piping, the headboard and the bed frame joins. Do not argue about your skin. Produce the photographs, and the specimen if you kept one.

“We moved you to another room, so the matter is resolved.”

A room change is mitigation, not remedy. You still paid for a room you could not use, and your luggage and clothing were still exposed. If you accept a move, a voucher or an upgrade, say in writing at the same time that you accept it as part payment and not in settlement. Two sentences typed in the lobby protect the rest of the claim.

Gather this before you write

□Dated, uncropped photographs of the mattress seams, piping, headboard and bed frame joins, plus a wide shot of the room and the room number in a frame of its own
□Any insect, photographed with something for scale, and retained in a sealed clear bag if you could trap it
□Written acknowledgement from the property naming the room, the issue and the time you reported it
□The full message thread with the property and the booking platform, exported with timestamps
□Your booking confirmation and the amount paid, with the merchant descriptor from your card statement
□Receipts for replacement accommodation, transport, laundry or heat treatment, and any medical assessment

Now make them answer.

Tell us what happened in your own words. We write the letters, set the deadlines, and email each escalation on the day it is due.