Law for setting up a hotel

Batch No : AIHD2 1401A

Name : Qiu Yi Ran
Fin No: G1344096X
Lecturer: Kanisan

Contents

1.Introduction..1
2. The Legal Requirements and Responsibilities2
3. Consumer Protection...3
3.1 Contract Law.3
3.2 Acts of Parliament.4
4. Employment Law, Health and Safety, and Data Protection5
4.1 Contract of Employment...5
4.2 Health and Safety..6
4.3 Data Protection..7
5. Other Matters...8
6. References.9

1. Introduction
For the travel and tourism industry, as well as all the other industries, law plays vital
role in their operation and development. There is a big system of laws and other rules
include constitution, laws and regulations of the industry etc., to constitute the legal
and regulatory framework. This is also true for setting up a hotel in Singapore and
there are many legal requirements and regulations.

2. The Legal Requirements and Responsibilities

The main legal requirements or framework that guides the setup of a hotel is the Hotel
Act in Singapore. And the main requirements are the needs for main licenses to set up
a hotel. These include Certificate of Registration And Hotel-Keeper's License. Under
the Hotels Act, any person who wishes to operate a hotel in Singapore, including a
guesthouse, boarding house or lodging house, must obtain from the Hotels Licensing
Board a Certificate of Registration to use the premises as a hotel and a Hotel-Keepers
License to manage the hotel (Ehoteladvisor, 2015). And, according to the law, there
are many requirements for the application of this license, which include: 1) the
business must be incorporated in Singapore as a company under the Company Act; 2)
Approval of premises, which means the investors should obtain a written approval for
using the premise for this business from Urban Redevelopment Authority of
Singapore; 3) Appointment of a Hotel-keeper: a general manager or CEO should be
appointed to manage the administrative stuffs of the hotel; 4) Clearance from National
Environment Agency, which means the investors have to obtain a Certificate of

Statutory Completion from the Planning and Development Department of the

National Environment Agency of Singapore; 5) Approval from Building Construction
Authority, which means the investors have to obtain a Temporary Occupation Permit
(TOP) from the Building Construction Authority of Singapore; 6) Approval from Fire
Safety Department, which means the investors have to obtain a Fire Safety Certificate
(FSC) from the Fire Safety Bureau of Singapore; 7) Advertising the Application: This
means the investors should advertise in both Lianhe Zaobao and The Straits Times
within 14 days of the date of submitting the application for a Certificate of
Registration. All of seven are compulsory requirements for setting up a hotel in
Singapore.

3. Consumer Protection
3.1 Contract Law
Contract refers to the agreement to establish, change, and stop civil legal relationship
of the both sides or the multi-party as equals. As a result, this requires the both sides
or the multi-parties to make the possibility of generating civil legal effects express as
the external acts. And the opinions of the parties should be reached an agreement
(Elliott and Quinn, 2009). As for the principle of the contract law, it explicit that the
legal status of party is equal, it should accord with ones own accord and fair, the
party should have good faith without harm public interests.
When it comes to the hospitality contract, it has its special features based on the
general contract law. First, its subject has specificity and the object is the hospitality
services the travel agency supplies. Second, its content is regulated by the relevant
laws and regulations. Most of the traveling contracts are the standard form of
contracts and nameless. Third, the contract is bilateral, paid, and promised contract.

3.2 Acts of Parliament

To protect the lawful rights and interests of the consumers, maintain social economic
order, and promote the healthy development of the economy, the parliament makes the
Consumer Protection Act. This act coordinates the obligations and rights between the
consumers who purchase, use and accept the goods ad service and the operators who
supply the goods and service they produce. From the perspective of the law status, the
consumers and operators are all the civil activity subjects. But in the realistic life,
consumers are in a certain condition of weakness in the process of commodity
transaction. Meanwhile, consumers are separate individuals with relatively scarce
professional law knowledge while the operators are the economic entities with
organization with some strong ones. So the Consumer Protection Acts has to do
something to protect the rights of the consumers. It regulates some procedures and
measures to protect consumers when the consumers suffer from consumption
complaints and harm.
This act regulates that the hotel operator in Singapore has to assume the quality
responsibility. If they make mass defects leading to the damage to the consumers, the
act give the rights to the consumers to ask for the compensation and the operator must
make corrections and pay for the consumers. And this act tries its best to protect
consumers sufficiently, promptly, and effectively. Meanwhile, it also makes the both
sides abide by the principle of voluntariness, equality, fair, and good faith.

4. Employment Law, Health and Safety, and Data Protection

4.1 Contract of Employment
The contract of employment refers to a category of contracts used in labor law to

identify responsibilities and rights of employees and employers (Nadin and Williams,
2012). Contents of a contract of employment commonly include the name and
signature of the employees and the employers, the term of the contract, jobs and
working time, wages and other welfare, conditions to relieve the contract, and so on.
The contract of employment arises the relationship between the employers and the
employees and they both regulated by the contract. According to Donna (2003), the
nature relationship between the employers and the employees is not equal and in fact,
the employers are always powerful organizations that are bearers of power while the
employees or workers are powerless bearers as they are usually isolated. According to
this situation, the design of the contract of employment should firstly consider the
interests of employees and labor union is integrant of an organization.

4.2 Health and Safety

Health and safety concerns directly and tightly to the happiness of the employees and
the operation of the employers and it is significant to exert health and safety law for
each organization. Take the review of health and safety regulation of Singapore in
1994 which is taken out by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) as an example,
the health and safety regulation aims to tell people how health and safety is meant to
work and suggests certain measure for both employees and employers to achieve the
health and safety. With the principle of so far as is reasonably practicable, the health
and safety regulation set out the general duties of each employer to its employee
members and every worker to his colleagues. In the health and safety regulation by
HSC, risk assessments and straightforward of them publicly in workplace is essential

job should be done by employers before work. This common law is applicable to the
hotel operators in Singapore.

4.3 Data Protection

With the information technology developing quickly and the applied range of the
computer technology expanding widespread, the network information security is
becoming more and more important. In recent years, the service industry makes a lot
of network leak leading to the great lose of the customer information. So as the
hospitality operators, they should realize the incident severity and raise their vigilance
to protect data of travelers. To enhance the strength of management for the data
protection, the hospitality operator should establish long-term administration
mechanism (Clark, 2008). About the information collection, use, and memory for the
travelers, they should make manifest regulations on protecting the information to
avoid the irrelevant personnel to contact, read and leak them. Meanwhile, its
necessary to enhance their professional ethics to boycott the unhealthy ways and
customs. If some leaking things happen, the party must be punished by the law.

5. Other Matters
There are still other matters from the legal aspects in the process of setting up a hotel
in Singapore and the majority of them are licenses such as a Non-Residential TV
License from the Media Development Authority of Singapore for broadcasting at the
premises and a Public Entertainment License and Arts Entertainment License issued
by the Singapore Police Force for organizing any ad-hoc entertainment in any place to
which the public has access (Singapore Statutes Online, 2015).

References
Clark, T. (2008) Strategies for Data Protection, Brocade, 1, pp. 34-35.
Donna, L. (2003) Keeping the Promise: Psychological Contract Violations for
Minority Employees, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18(1), pp. 22 45.
Ehoteladvisor (2015) How to Guide for Hoteliers Setting Up A Hotel in Singapore
[online] Available at http://ehoteladvisor.com/how-to-guide-for-hoteliers-setting-up-ahotel-in-singapore/ [Accessed: 13 March, 2015]
Elliott, C. and Quinn, F. (2009) Contract Law. Ashford: Ashford Color Press Ltd.,
Gasport.
Nadin, J. and Williams, C. (2011) Psychological Contract Violation Beyond An
Employees' Perspective: The Perspective of Employers. Employee Relations, 34(2),
pp.110 125.
Singapore

Statutes

Online

(2015)

Hotels

Act

[online]

Available

http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=0;query=DocId
%3A7279d8ed-7ec5-43ea-93b4ede997b53db%20%20Status%3Ainforce%20Depth
%3A0;rec=0 [Accessed: 13 March, 2015]

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