Writing terms and conditions for your B&B: what to include and how guests accept them

At most B&Bs the terms and conditions were written in a quarter of an hour at some point, copied from a colleague or from a website that looked professional, and never looked at again. That works, right up to the moment it doesn't: a guest who never shows up and wants the deposit back, a cracked washbasin the guest says was already cracked, a family of five arriving for a room for two. At that moment you want one thing: a short, clear text the guest accepted when booking, and proof that they did.

This article is not legal advice; have your final text checked if you are in doubt. It is a practical checklist of what belongs in the terms of a small accommodation business, what is better left out, and how to handle acceptance on direct bookings.

Why you need your own terms, even if you take bookings via Booking.com

Bookings through Booking.com or Airbnb are covered by the platform's terms and by the cancellation rules you set there. That covers a lot. But as soon as a guest books directly, through your website, by phone or by email, there is no platform setting the rules any more. Then the agreement between you and the guest applies, and if it isn't written down anywhere, there effectively isn't one.

If you are working on more direct bookings, you also need good terms. One without the other is a risk you only see when things go wrong.

What must be in there at minimum

Stick to the topics that cause disputes in practice. For a B&B or holiday home there are about eight.

1. Who the operator is. Your trading name, address, company number and contact details. Obvious, but often missing from a text that was copied once.

2. When a booking is final. On receipt of the confirmation email? On receipt of the deposit? Pick one moment and use the same one in your confirmation. Our advice: the booking is final once the deposit is paid, and until then the room remains for sale. That avoids the situation where someone has "reserved" but never pays.

3. Price and what it includes. Whether breakfast is included, whether tourist tax is on top or inside the price, what cleaning, linen and any surcharges cost. Refer to the price at the moment of booking, so a price change on your website doesn't start an argument.

4. Payment. How much deposit, when the balance is due, which payment methods you accept, and what happens if the balance is not in on time. If you ask for a deposit, this is where you set it down.

5. Cancellation and no-show. The topic that causes the most arguments. Use the same percentages and deadlines as in your cancellation policy on the platforms, or explain why they differ. Also state explicitly what a no-show costs: usually the whole stay or the first night.

6. Arrival and departure. Check-in and check-out times, what happens if the guest arrives much later than announced, and whether early check-in or late check-out is possible and what it costs.

7. Number of people and use of the room. The maximum number of people per room, whether children and babies count, whether pets are welcome and whether there is a charge. This is also the place for the smoking ban and the ban on parties or subletting the room.

8. Damage and liability. That the guest is liable for damage caused by them or their party, how you establish it (preferably together at departure, with photos) and whether you take a security deposit. Also limit your own liability for, say, theft from the room or vehicles in the car park, within what the law allows.

Add a short line on privacy (which guest data you keep and why, referring to your privacy statement) and on which law and which court apply, and you have a complete text.

What is better left out

The temptation is to put everything that ever went wrong into the terms. Don't. Nobody reads six pages, and clauses that are unreasonable for a consumer usually don't hold up, signed or not. A few examples of what to leave out:

• Penalties out of proportion to the damage, such as €500 for smoking in the room. A reasonable cleaning charge is defensible; a punitive amount usually isn't.
• Clauses excluding all liability on your part, even for your own fault. Towards consumers these are generally invalid.
• Rules that are really house rules: breakfast times, where bikes go, how the heating works. Those belong in the digital guest guide, not in a contract.

The distinction is simple: terms and conditions govern money, cancellation and liability and are accepted at booking. House rules govern living together during the stay and are communicated at arrival. Mix them, and your contract gets long and your guest guide gets stern.

A readable text in five tips

1. Write in the second person. "You pay the balance no later than seven days before arrival" is clearer than "The customer shall be obliged to settle the balance".
2. One topic per heading, in the order of the journey: booking, paying, cancelling, arriving, staying, leaving.
3. Concrete numbers. Not "in good time", but "no later than 14 days before arrival". Not "a reasonable deposit", but "30% of the stay".
4. The same figures everywhere. Terms, confirmation email, website and the settings on your platforms must say the same thing. Different percentages in different places is the quickest way to lose an argument later.
5. Translate. At least Dutch, French and English if you host those guests. A guest who couldn't read the text gets little out of it.

Aim for one or two A4 pages. That is enough for an accommodation business, and it actually gets read.

How a guest accepts the terms

A good text is half the job. The other half is proving the guest agreed to it when booking. For an online booking that means:

• A mandatory checkbox in the booking engine, with a link to the full text, before the guest can pay. A text that only sits at the bottom of the website doesn't count as accepted.
• Sending the terms with the confirmation, as an attachment or a link to the version that applied at that moment. If you change your text later, the old version still applies to that booking.
• A timestamp on the booking: when, and which version. Many operators forget the latter, until three months after a change they have to show what the guest saw at the time.

For a booking by phone or email, put the terms in the confirmation and tie the final booking to payment of the deposit. Someone who pays the deposit after a confirmation containing the terms has, in practice, accepted them.

Finally, make sure your terms are visible again at online check-in. Not to have them accepted a second time, but so the guest isn't surprised on arrival by the check-out time or the smoking ban.

How this works in BedFlow PMS

In BedFlow PMS you set a link to your terms and conditions and to your cancellation policy per property. The booking engine on your website shows a mandatory checkbox with a link to both before payment, in the guest's language; without the checkbox the guest cannot complete the booking. The same links appear on your quotes and in the guest portal, and the cancellation rules and deposit you configure are the figures the guest actually sees and pays. Your house rules go separately into the digital guest guide, which the guest receives before arrival. One set of agreements, the same everywhere, without having to wonder at each booking whether the guest saw them.

In short

• On direct bookings your terms are the only contract. No text, no agreement.
• Limit yourself to the topics that cause disputes: booking, price, payment, cancellation, arrival, people, damage.
• Keep house rules and terms separate; one is a contract, the other is practical information.
• Short, concrete, translated, and the same figures everywhere.
• Have the guest actively accept at booking and store when and which version.

Want your terms accepted and sent automatically with every direct booking? Try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days, no credit card required. Rates are on the pricing page and the documentation explains how to set up terms and the guest guide per property.