The Guest Need Of The Decade
Every decade, the hospitality industry discovers a guest concern it had been quietly mispricing. In the 1990s it was smoking. In the 2000s it was Wi-Fi. In the 2010s it was sustainability. In 2026, the next one is already here and already consequential: bed bug safety.
A new study Phocuswright conducted on behalf of Valpas of 1,082 travellers across the U.S., U.K. and France gives the first detailed picture of how far this shift has already gone.
New 2026 Phocuswright research shows that pests like bed bugs and roaches are the single most cited source of worry when travellers book a hotel, ranked above cleanliness, value, and staff in the U.S., U.K., and France. Bed bug safety has moved from facilities concern to a booking-layer variable, and this briefing maps the three forces that compounded to put it there, alongside what the commercial response data looks like when a property certifies
The demand is already in your funnel – happening invisibly online
Shift 1: Pests are the #1 booking concern in 2026
The first shift is visible in the booking data itself: across all three source markets, pests outrank every other surveyed concern when travellers select a hotel. Not cleanliness. Not value. Not staff
Shift 2: Around 70% of travellers across all segments already scan for hygiene or bed bug reputation
The second shift: travellers aren't waiting for hotels to address this. They're scanning for evidence before they book. Roughly seven in ten travellers take at least one hygiene or bed bug-related research action during hotel selection – searching for reports, checking review mentions, using AI tools to surface safety information, or contacting properties directly about protocols.
Shift 3: Around 50% of travellers across all segments wouldn't book a hotel with a recent bed bug review
The third shift is what happens when that scanning turns up a flag. Half of travellers in the survey said they would not book a hotel whose recent reviews mention bed bugs – a tax that is permanent, public, and priced into OTA algorithms. And increasingly, this tax is enforced by the AI booking agents described above, summarising review content and surfacing only properties with a clean signal.
Once this signal exists, it cannot be uncreated. Review platforms no longer decay old content. A bed bug mention from 2023 surfaces alongside last week's reviews in aggregated ratings, AI-generated summaries, and search results.
Bed bug safety is the highest-ranked guest room attribute in 2026
If the demand is visible, the second question is what travellers do with it. The same Phocuswright study asked travellers to rate 14 common hotel amenities as "necessary," "nice-to-have," or "not needed" – and a guaranteed bed bug-safe room finished #1 in the U.K. and France and second only to air-conditioning in the U.S. It ranked above Wi-Fi, above non-smoking rooms, and above every hospitality investment below the top four. What today looks like an attribute is the seed of tomorrow's standard.
Notably outside the top 10: free room upgrades and in-room mini bar — a few of the most common loyalty currencies and premium-signalling amenities in the industry. Hotels are stocking and maintaining inventory that ranks below a guarantee travellers would pay nothing extra to receive.
Verifiable bed bug safety certification captures the existing demand
Valpas guarantees and verifies in real time that bed bug safety is already taken care of. 30,000+ rooms across 60+ destinations operate on Valpas infrastructure, with operators including Marriott and Aman, and owners including Aroundtown and Covivio. Certified properties are surfaced directly inside AI booking surfaces, OTA filters, and corporate procurement systems – the three layers where bed bug safety has become a gating criterion.
The opportunity: Certification drives brand switching, return, and trial – no negative response
The behavioural data tells the commercial story. When asked to choose between a certified hotel and the brand they are typically loyal to, seven in ten travellers would leave their usual brand. When asked about a certified version of a brand they already stay at, eight in ten would be more likely to return. And when asked about brands they have never stayed at, three in four would try one if it were certified. Upfront assurance in the form of a certification had no negative response in any market.
And it's already bookable inside AI systems such as ChatGPT
Valpas Hotels surfacing directly inside ChatGPT in response to a live traveller query — the layer where bed bug safety has become a gating criterion for hotel recommendation.
What certified operators are saying
Meet Valpas – and get the full dataset first
The survey and white paper behind this briefing will be published in full in June 2026. Get in touch to receive early access to the full dataset, market-level breakdowns, and operator case studies.