A highly profitable addition to a holiday letting, the holiday hot tubs market is booming. According to self-catering specialists Hoseasons, a private hot tub is the number one searched for item on the website, accounting for more than 100,000 searches each month. Now seen as the must-have ingredient in the recipe to holiday booking success, there are however, potentially hazardous pitfalls that many holiday park operators are falling into.
In recent years, a significant number of holiday park operators and holiday let owners have purchased and operate what are in fact domestic hot tubs only designed for home and not intended for commercial use. Often these hot tubs are not suitable for rental lodges and do not comply with the guidance within the Health & Safety Executive’s control of legionella and other infectious agents in spa-pool system (HSG282), which was released in January 2017.
Although the HSG282 is not statutory law, it is considered best practice and approved code of practice and would be used in a court of law as a measure of whether or not a risk holder has complied ‘as far a reasonably practical’ to meet the requirements of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974.
“The holiday hot tub market has grown extensively in the last three years but unfortunately, a lot of retailers have not seen a fair share of this business due to manufacturers and distributors choosing to supply the holiday parks direct due to the volumes that parks purchase,” says Chris Brady of Lincolnshire-based 1 Stop Spas and SpaTech Training.
“In my opinion over 70 per cent of UK holiday parks now have a hot tub of some description on their lodges. However, I would say only five to ten per cent have been purchased through a local hot tub retailer.”
Chris goes on to explain that holiday parks often purchase directly from manufacturers and distributors and choose to have the hot tubs supplied only via curb side delivery with no professional installation or commissioning – all to keep costs down. Furthermore, the parks then sell these onto private buyers within their parks, and often without any form of handover or tuition with the owners.
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