Why is the law important in the hotel industry?

The hospitality industry is the most volatile industry when it comes to lawsuits. Therefore, if you work in this field, it is important that you have a good knowledge of the laws relating to hospitality. From the moment you decide to go on vacation to the moment you complete and return home, a whole series of unfortunate incidents can arise that could ruin your well-deserved rest.

If you are working with an airline; or travel and tourism agency; or hotels and tourist transportation, it’s worth your salt to find out what you can do to avoid a potentially costly lawsuit that could bankrupt you or your business.

The context of the hospitality law can be classified into three types. The first is the law of tort, the second is the law of contract, and the third is the law of agency. In this article we will analyze the law of tort.

Tort law relates to areas such as trespassing on people, land, and personal property. The other area in tort law relates to negligence law.

If you were a hotel manager and found out that an unregistered person was using the pool, what would you do? The simple answer is that you can evict the person from the premise as they are an intruder. But what if, as an intruder and while using the pool, you were injured because the pool area was wet and slippery and not properly maintained?

Obviously, if the injured person was a guest, you could certainly bring an action against your hotel for negligence. This is because, as hotel management, you have a duty to your guest and by failing to maintain your premise, there was a breach of this duty of care. The guest who has suffered an injury will be enough for him to bring an action in the law of torts. This is pretty safe. But what is uncertain is whether the same level of protection of the law can be applied to a person who is an intruder on the hotel premises. This is something that requires further analysis.

If this matter goes to court, the probable test the court will apply is based on a concept called causation. It’s about looking at the situation objectively and deciding based on what lawyers would like to presume as the ‘reasonable man’ argument. (We will discuss this in another article.) Based on this concept, what it means is that if the injured person was a guest or an intruder, the key question would be whether the injury caused was by direct negligence on the part of the hotel in failing to maintain its facilities.

If the answer is that the injury was caused by the hotel’s negligence in not maintaining the premise, then this would be reason enough for both the guest and the trespasser to sue.

But of course, it is not as simple as that. There are other considerations to analyze. How and why did the intruder gain access to the pool? And the concept of the innocent intruder!

This is just one example of the importance of the law in the hotel industry. There are other factors to consider as well. We will discuss this in another article.