Tourism is one of Cumbria’s most important industries, employing 65,000 people and bringing £3billion into the economy.

Our cross-discipline Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality Team plays a leading role in the tourism sector, offering specialist legal advice for businesses operating within the leisure and tourism industry.

Our team works for a diverse range of leisure, tourism and hospitality clients, including hotels, B&Bs, caravan parks, restaurants, visitor attractions, leisure operators and tourism membership groups.

Our experience includes the following:

• Sales and acquisitions

Our team has advised on the sale and acquisition of numerous hotels, caravan parks and leisure businesses throughout the Lake District, Cumbria and beyond. This includes the transfer of multi-million pound luxury hotels and caravan parks.

• Commercial Property and Planning

Praised by Legal 500 for its “competence, capability and capacity”, our Commercial Property Team has advised on numerous acquisitions, sales and lettings of hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, pubs, time-shares and visitor attractions.

Our in-house planning experts work extensively in the sector, helping tourist attractions, tour operators, caravan park owners and others to achieve their development and expansion goals, especially within the constraints of the Lake District National Park and World Heritage Site.

We also have specialists who deal with associated licensing matters and we can provide due diligence support to enable tourism and hospitality businesses to be financed or re-financed.

• Banking and finance

Our specialist Banking team is very experienced in advising leisure and tourism businesses and their lenders on putting in place new loans and further advances. They have acted on acquisitions of holiday parks, refinances of hotel chains and also development loans for extensions and refurbishments of existing accommodation. Our sensible, commercial lawyers anticipate and cover off the lender’s requirements, so that drawdown of funds can be achieved quickly and easily.

• Employment and HR

Our Employment and HR team provides a full range of support to leisure, tourism and hospitality businesses including the provision of seasonal and permanent employment contracts, day-to-day advice on managing grievances, absence and other HR issues and delivering high level support for difficult or sensitive employment tribunal claims.

Led by David Gibson it includes specialist employment law lawyers and highly experienced human resources consultants delivering a service to leisure, tourism and hospitality clients across the UK, but with particular focus on the North of England.

• Commercial Litigation

Advice on commercial disputes is provided by our 'truly pragmatic' Dispute Resolution team. We’ve helped accommodation providers, attractions and hospitality businesses with a wide range of commercial disputes, including property disputes, customer complaints, breach of contract claims and loss of tourist business.

We are very proud to be a Strategic Partner of Cumbria Tourism. We are also members of Keswick Tourism Association and we work closely with several other leading tourism, leisure and hospitality sector organisations in the Lake District and Cumbria.