Sectors we serve
How we help hotels and holiday parks understand licensing laws
Licensing results that help you succeed
Working with hotels
In recent years the hotel sector has undergone enormous change. Long gone are the days when the main experience of a hotel stay was the room and facilities within it.
Sure, these are still important. Particularly for budget hotels or where the physical building does not easily allow for additional services to be provided.
But nowadays, many consumers want a much deeper experience from their hotel.
In fact, when hotels get it right, it is not just their guests who want the experience; it is members of the public, too.
From bars and restaurants to cinemas and beauty spas, hotels are now offering an ever wider range of facilities, and this is where our licensing solicitors come in.
Accommodation licensing
Licensing in hotels
Whilst not to sound like we are bragging, there is probably no firm of licensing solicitors anywhere in the UK that has obtained the range of licences that we have for our clients.
We work with hotel owners, financiers, bankers and developers to help them achieve their plans.
For example, we have advised hotels where significant refurbishments have been carried out to their bar and dining facilities. From a licensing perspective, this raises a range of issues and can often mean a brand new premises licence is required.
But one of the many risks, of course, is that your new premises licence might not give you the permissions, such as trading hours, that your old one did.
Plus, if your hotel is located in a cumulative impact area, where there is a presumption that applications for new premises licences or variations will be refused, your application is highly likely to receive representations (objections). These can be from members of the public, other businesses and licensing authorities such as the police and environmental health.
Using outside areas
A trend that shows no sign of dying-down is the demand for using outside spaces. We have helped many hotels obtain new licences, advised hotels more recently where hotels wish to have outside bar and dining facilities and obtained variations or new licences to facilitate this. Hotels have over the years also diversified in bringing restaurant operators to run standalone restaurants within the hotel itself completely independently from the hotel business ; We have acted in relation to these restaurants, as well as providing a wider range of licensing services to the hotel itself.
Additional offerings
Hotels have also diversified in offering cinema rooms as well as the standard availability of films to each individual room. We have also seen an increase in the beauty treatment and spa facilities offered by hotels, which are all required to be licensed. We have dealt with obtaining these licences on the hotel’s behalf. The hotel industry is always looking at new concepts and diversification to offer their residents and members of the general public a rounded and relaxing experience.
Accommodation licensing
Holiday Parks
Holidays parks across the country have a wide variety of facilities, from pubs and late night clubs to sit down restaurants and takeaways. Plus, there are numerous gambling facilities on offer, such as arcades and bingo.
We have a detailed knowledge of this sector and have been giving licensing legal advice to holiday parks for years.
We act for 3 of the largest, if not the largest, operators in the UK, these being:
- Bourne Leisure Ltd who own Haven, Butlins and Warner Hotels;
- Park Holidays; and
- Park Dean Resorts.
We act on behalf of these companies as well as other smaller holiday park operators both in terms of their licensing and gaming requirements.
Holiday parks are often spread far-and-wide and, in some cases, they can offer over 20 different food and drink operations on a single site.
Our licensing solicitors are accustomed to dealing with complex applications, each with their own different challenges. For example, holiday parks commonly provide entertainment outdoors and across several licensed premises.