People in the hotel industry are waking up to the fact that they are hosting some nasty guests. In the past few years, Cimex lectularius — the bedbug — has been making a small but alarming comeback.

Hotels are particularly vulnerable because the bugs travel in luggage and clothing and because hotels have so many people sleeping in their beds.

A survey of insect-control companies in 2004 by Pest Control Technology magazine found that hotels accounted for the biggest proportion of reported infestations — 37 percent.

Bedbugs nest on or near mattresses and feed at night by biting and sucking the blood of people as they sleep. They're nearly impossible to get rid of without powerful pesticides. The good news is that bedbugs are not known to transmit diseases.

The comeback of the bedbug is turning into a legal and public-relations headache for the hotel industry. In recent weeks, a Florida couple said they were bitten by bedbugs on a cruise ship.

In March, a family of three filed suit against a Days Inn in Ottawa, alleging that in July 2003, they awoke to find dozens of bedbugs on the sheets.

And in February, two North Carolina women filed suit against Days Inn and one of its franchisees for renting them an infested room in Durham, N.C.

Some say the bedbug claims are being blown out of proportion, partly by unscrupulous litigants. Thomas Jones, an associate professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas' hotel school, says bedbug claims are among the top frauds perpetrated against hotels.

Gary Bennett, a professor of urban entomology at Purdue University, hadn't seen a case of bedbugs until last year, when a student was bitten in a hotel.

"You know infestations are on the rise when someone in the entomology department gets bedbugs," Bennett says.