Taking stowaway bedbugs home from your trip? FRAPORT sniffer dogs bark no!

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Little mosquito bites from your summer vacation may bring back memories of pleasantly balmy summer nights by the sea. But little insect bites in your own home are a rather less pleasant reminder that you may have brought some little stowaways back home with you: bed bugs are an unwelcome holiday souvenir, but not a rare one! Since 2016, the Bed Bugs team at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) has therefore been offering a special service. To avoid unwelcome pests in tourist travel, the sniffer dogs regularly sniff out airplanes and hotels for bed bugs. Tracking down the little bloodsuckers is no problem for the specially trained dogs with their keen sense of smell. From now on, passengers at FRA also have the option to get their own baggage checked thoroughly before potentially carrying bed bugs into their own home.

FRA’s Bed Bugs team is made up of five dog handlers with a total of five sniffer dogs, all certified by the Bed Bug Foundation. To book their service, passengers can simply send a short e-mail to [email protected] up to three days before they fly back, including the following details: name, flight number, date and time of arrival at Frankfurt Airport. They will then receive a confirmation by e-mail with the mobile phone number of the responsible Bed Bugs team. After the passenger has arrived, this team goes straight to the baggage claim and searches the suitcases there. The service costs a flat rate of €106 and covers three baggage items (each additional suitcase costs €29). If a dog does indicate that there are bed bugs, there is an option to hire a pest controller based at the airport who will then get rid of the bugs. In this way, passengers can save themselves a lot of hassle with these unwanted souvenirs.

With its slogan “Gute Reise! We make it happen,” Frankfurt Airport’s operator Fraport is systematically focusing on passengers and their individual needs. Fraport is also taking its slogan as the inspiration to continuously develop new services aimed at further enhancing the customer experience at Germany’s most important transport hub.

Passengers and visitors can find out more about the wide range of services available at Frankfurt Airport on the airport website, at the Service Shop and via the airport’s social media channels onTwitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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