Legislation for Tourist Accommodation

Visit England, the Country’s National Tourist Board have produced a free online resource for all accommodation providers. The website offers clear guidance and practical information on the legislation that affects accommodation businesses including a handy checklist and updates on the latest legislation affecting health and safety, food and drink, marketing laws, premises, guests, staff, finance and business.

Business Start-Up Help and Advice

Let’s do Business Group is the enterprise agency for the Rother area, helping to support new business start-ups and providing continued support for established businesses.

Website: https://letsdobusinessgroup.co.uk/

Trained business advisors provide initial free of charge business advice and start up help, training opportunities and workshops available, help to test the viability of your venture and help and support to market and promote your business.

Bookings / Cancellation Policy

It is advisable to notify a customer at the time of making a reservation as to any booking or cancellation policy you wish to impose, this can include taking deposits and cancellation charges.

A cancellation policy is usually put in place to protect a business and money that may be due to you. Any such policy should be mentioned to the consumer at the time of booking and made available on literature or promotions such as leaflets or websites.

It is normally accepted that if a consumer provides a reasonable amount of notice of cancellation of a booking and the room/property can easily be re-let it would only be reasonable to charge the consumer the cost of re-letting the room/property and any associated admin fee in returning the consumers deposit (minus the charges). However if a consumer does not provide a reasonable amount of notice of cancellation or simply does not turn up and you are unable to re-let the room/property it is normal policy to claim compensation from that guest for the cost of loss incurred by the business.

Further information is available from East Sussex Trading Standards.

Accessibility

Access Visits

The Hastings and Rother Disability Forum offers the opportunity for accommodation providers in 1066 Country to see their property through the eyes of a disabled visitor.   Members of the Hastings and Rother Disability Forum are offering, at no charge to visit your property and undertake an informal access visit.   The results of the visit will help to inform you of any access issues within your property and will also pick up on how you can better promote your property to visitors with disabilities.

The visit will be attended by at least 3 members of the Disability Forum and where possible the Forum will try and ensure that different disabilities are represented.

If you are interested in undertaking an access visit on your establishment with the Hastings and Rother Disability Forum or would like any more information please contact the Forum directly on 01424 420516 or email: de_cham@hotmail.com. Any assistance towards travel costs or a donation to the Hastings and Rother Disability Forum would be welcomed.

The work undertaken will not constitute an official access audit, the information provided by the Hastings and Rother Disability Forum will be for guidance only and is based on the opinion of local disabled people.  If an official access audit is required, then advice should be sought from a quality access auditor or from Enjoy England who operates the National Accessible Scheme – for more details please go to Enjoy England National Accessible Scheme.

At Your Service – Visit England

Visit England have recently produced a booklet titled: At Your Service, which provides information on how to improve accessibility within your business for customers. For more information go to Visit England – Improve Access

Source of funding / grants

BETRE

BETRE – Better for businesses, better for the environment. Betre provide free and practical advice to businesses in East Sussex on how to cut utility costs, environmental impact and advice on how to work towards a low carbon economy.

For more information visit Betre

Lottery

The lottery funding website, provides information on all the lottery funders in the UK available to UK businesses, including Awards for All, Heritage Lottery Fund, Big Lottery Fund and many others.

DEFRA

DEFRA – Department for Environment, food and rural Affairs policy and regulations on the environment, food and rural affairs.

For more information on their programmes please visit DEFRA.

Training

Tourism South East offer a range of training opportunities throughout the year on everything from customer service to social marketing.

For full details on all training schemes visit Tourism South East training.

1066 Country also run ad hoc training sessions within Rother and Hastings and you can contact them on the 1066 Country website