Function room Hire - Licensing & Legal aspect

Good afternoon everyone and thank you in advance for reading/helping me with this :)

My fiance owns a hotel in Scotland which has been vacant for several years. We plan to start hiring out some of the bedroom rooms in the courtyard area to local contractors to start with and also want to make use of the restaurant as well as function room facilities.

Hosting weddings seems like it could be a real minefield with lots of high expectations and demands for you as a venue in general what with catering and hiring lots of people. At first, but we may evolve the plan after a few months or year after gaining some insight, is to rent out the function room and or restaurant to local groups requiring a venue in order to host their event. This could be anything at all even a book club meeting etc... What I would like to know is what I need to do from a legal standpoint to make sure everything is above board before I start to market and offer the facilities we have? So if small events are hosted at our place we would provide refreshments ideally in the way of tea/sandwiches etc that can be achieved without needing to hire people and can be done ourselves.

These seem like small steps I'd be comfortable with before perhaps looking into running the hotel properly or hosting big events with catering.

Love to know what you guys think and look forward to any criticism or advise.
Thanks again
Nick

To me it sounds like it has a lot of potential. Providing a facility for wedding receptions, school reunions, corporate meetings and etc could be a good option. You might want to check and see what the competition is in the area and how busy they are. Converting it to a bed and breakfast might be another good option. The advantage of the B & B is that is is steady where most weddings are on a weekend. Another option might be to convert it to a assisted living facility. The plus for that is that with the aging population there is demand and it would be filled 7 days a week. That option would take more staff but could generate more cash flow as well.

Hello Turboguy

I do like the idea of converting to a B&B. As the property used to function as a hotel is should nearly be up to scratch in terms of facilities but I’ll have to check the fire regulation, insurance and licensing requirements… Is there perhaps a one stop shop where I can find the legal requirements for opening/operating this kind of business?

Have you got any personal experience in such a venture and can you provide any pointers for anything in general at all, such as operation, marketing, meeting regulation codes etc?

Thanks for your help

What you may want to do is figure out which region or county in Scotland your building, and future business, is located... Then do a bit of sleuthing yourself by putting that information into a google search, maybe along with the word "government" to locate their official government website. It is here you'll probably find the bulk of the answers you are looking for; as far as business regulations, requirements, permits, safety codes, and any other pertinent business bylaws.