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Unsafe holiday villas to be 'blacklisted' - 14 March 2007

A new scheme has been introduced with the aim of making holiday accommodation safer for tourists. The Travelsafe health and safety accreditation system will mean that hotels, apartments and villas face blacklisting if they fail to pass new standards. The aim of the scheme, for which Lowcostbeds and OnHoliday Group/Jet2holidays are the first to sign up, is to make it safer for Britons to holiday abroad.

This issue was brought sharply into focus last September when tragedy struck a family holidaying in Corfu, as carbon monoxide leaked into their accommodation and caused the deaths of two young children.

The scheme sets out the required standards of health and safety for the properties used by British holidaymakers. The two companies already committed to the scheme will require all of the estimated 5,000 properties they represent to complete the assessment and meet the minimum safety requirements.

The system could also affect large numbers of holiday home owners who rent their property overseas to UK tourists. If their rental is managed through one of the major UK tour operators, or one of the popular holiday lettings websites, and they become members of the Travelsafe scheme, it will mean that adequate safety features will need to be installed and approved before the property can be let.

Of course, property owners who are renting their overseas homes out to tourists or the local market have responsibilities to make sure they are safe and comply with the laws of the land. The Travelsafe scheme could be just the thing to formalize health and safety standards across the tourist market, and give UK owners of rental property overseas a benchmark standard for safety features.

 

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