Britons returning from their Bank Holiday break today may find they are not travelling alone, with research uncovered by The Times showing that there is an increase in the number of bedbugs sharing our trains, buses, planes and coaches.

Rentokil, Britain’s biggest pest control company, has seen a 40 per cent rise in the number of transport-related call-outs in the past year, with more than two thirds of infestations on public and private transport concerning bedbugs.

The remainder are mostly biting insects, including fleas from cats and dogs. Cruise ships are having to deal with rats and cockroaches.

Bedbugs thrive in small spaces and are commonly found in the creases of seats and seat-belt fastenings on buses, trains and aircraft. They have also been discovered in luggage holds where they hop from bag to bag, looking for a suitable place to settle.

Although the effects of their bite are rarely severe, they are irritating, unpleasant and in extreme cases, where the bedbug feeds on the host’s blood for a long time, can result in anaemia.

Savvas Othon, technical director at Rentokil, said: “The short turnaround times for planes and other forms of transport means they are sometimes not inspected as thoroughly as they used to be. What should happen is a good vacuum around the back of seats and in the creases of seats. Any small gap is ideal for a bedbug, which can go for quite some time without a meal.”

A rise in the number of people travelling, more use of cheap modes of transport and an increasingly mobile population have all contributed to the proliferation of bedbugs.

Rentokil says that it has seen a 24 per cent increase in work related to airlines, a 51 per cent increase in road-related call-outs, a 59 per cent jump in the shipping sector and a 9 per cent rise on rail in the past 12 months, compared with the year before.

“Bedbug infestations will continue to rise,” Mr Othon said. “Delays at airports don’t help as people sit in airport terminals, take things out of their bags and the bedbug jumps out and goes in search of another source of blood.”

David Cain, managing director of Bed-Bugs.co.uk, a dedicated bedbug obliteration service, said he was not surprised by the prevalence of bedbugs in transport upholstery and baggage areas.

He said: “The number one reason for the spread of bedbugs is the lack of public awareness. People simply do not know how to detect them in the way they would have done in the 1950s and 1960s.

“They are a problem on buses, trains and subway systems, and on cruise ships too — any form of transport where there is a high turnover, really. Recently, on an overground train in South London, I pulled at the parting of the upholstery and found at least four months of dirt and debris.”

Adult bedbugs, Cimex lectularius, once confined to cramped, insanitary living conditions, are about a quarter of an inch long and are easily seen with the naked eye. Light tan in colour, the wingless bug swells in size and turns reddish brown after feeding on blood.

While some people do not react to bedbug bites, to the majority they are intensely itchy with a pale or white centre. It can range from a red swelling about the size of a 1p piece to 10 cm (almost 4 in) in diameter.

Klaus Reinhardt, an entomology specialist at the University of Sheffield, said: “Some will display red swellings, others more systemic inflammatory responses like a swollen arm. In rarer cases some individuals might experience a bullous eruption, which is a liquid-filled bubble.”

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