Cour St Georges

Bedbugs showed up on the third night of my six-night stay in Room 10, and I got quite a lot of bites. I found them at 2am and told a staff member. He stayed surprisingly calm and said to move my pillow away from the headboard because that was where the bedbugs and other bugs came from. It seemed obvious to me that he knew about them. Since it was 2am, I moved to another room for the night, then checked out immediately the next day. I emailed the hotel, but they kept saying staff didn’t know there were bedbugs and would have cleaned thoroughly if they had. They also said other guests might have brought them, so they wouldn’t refund me. I checked Google reviews and found more than 20 comments mentioning bedbugs. The hotel must have known for a long time, but still lets people check in. I know this place is cheaper than others, but trust me, you don’t want to sleep with bedbugs.

We stayed for two nights and loved Ghent. Our first-floor room was spacious and clean, and thankfully we didn’t see any bedbugs like other people have mentioned. There were some mosquitoes, but I didn’t mind, haha. The service lady, who I think is one of the owners, was very kind. She didn’t charge us for breakfast at all, which was a lovely surprise. The hotel was very reasonably priced for such a perfect location, and the room, service and breakfast were all amazing. I’d definitely stay here again next time I’m in Ghent.

We checked the bed for anything suspicious after I’d read the reviews over lunch, but didn’t spot anything then. Later, after dinner at Ellis Burgers and a few drinks at Aperotheek, we were lying in bed talking when I saw something crawling on the wall. My boyfriend grabbed paper and squashed them, saying it was a mother and its baby. For my own sanity, I told myself it was something else. At about 10.30PM we turned off the main light, leaving the night light on, and I started to drift off. Then I felt an itch in an odd spot on my back. I sat up and saw a bedbug next to my pillow. We turned the light on, but of course it was gone. My boyfriend spotted another one crawling on the wall, so we packed up and went home to the Netherlands. We checked out without the guy at reception asking us anything, and by 1.30 AM we were back in our own beds. We’d arrived in Ghent that day for a weekend trip to Ghent and Bruges, to celebrate our second anniversary on Monday. My sister had given me a hotel giftbox for my birthday in June. The friendly woman at reception had given us our keys around 4 PM. At first the room seemed fine: it was massive, with a nice bed, a big sleeping area and a big bathroom, and the hotel was very central. We’d had an amazing lunch at the House of Waffles. That all changed when we found the bugs.

The location was perfect, and the rooms were okay, with a strangely interesting decor. But I only lasted half a night before waking up to several bedbugs at different stages. They offered me another room, but I’m glad I didn’t take it. Google reviews and other recommendations made it clear that the hotel had known about bedbugs in several rooms for months. I checked out during the night, and the receptionist wasn’t sure whether I could get a refund. Luckily, Hotels.com gave me a full refund, though it was a bit difficult to find how to contact them. I later asked the hotel through Hotels.com to cover at least the extra cost of booking somewhere else that night, during a weekend in a popular city. It was expensive, to say the least, and Hotels.com wouldn’t cover it, so it was up to the hotel. They refused. I gave them a chance to apologize and cover all or some of the added cost. They took it as a threat because I said I’d make other travelers aware of the place’s condition. I would have done that anyway. All they said was that they “regret the inconvenience.” My inconvenience included sitting at the train station from 3 am to 8am before the only available hotel opened reception, freezing and steaming all my clothes through several steps at the next place, and risking the bugs spreading to other hotels and my home, with major financial consequences.