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Holiday lets · South West
Holiday let insurance is commercial cover built for property let to paying guests on short stays — not the residential home or buy-to-let policies that assume a single, long-term household. It protects the building, its furnishings and your booking income against the specific risks of high guest turnover, and it carries the public liability and unoccupancy terms that short-term letting demands.
Part of: Commercial insurance at Apex
In short
Holiday lets and serviced accommodation need commercial cover, not a standard home or buy-to-let policy. A specialist policy combines buildings insurance on a full rebuild-cost basis, contents and furnishings cover for a high-turnover property, and public liability for guest injury. Where you employ cleaners, housekeepers or changeover staff, employers’ liability is a legal requirement at a statutory minimum of £5m. Good policies also cover loss of rental income, accidental and malicious damage and theft by guests, and escape of water — the most common claim, and one insurers restrict during the empty periods between lets unless you meet unoccupancy conditions. The single biggest mistake is letting a property commercially on a residential policy: it can invalidate the cover entirely, leaving a declined claim and no protection when you most need it.
Letting to guests? It needs commercial cover, not a home policy — we’ll check yours. Or call 0117 325 0027.
Get a quote Call 0117 325 0027Holiday let insurance is a commercial policy designed for property let to paying guests for short stays, whether that is a single cottage on the Cornish coast, a Dartmoor barn conversion or a portfolio of serviced apartments in Bristol or Exeter. In one policy it brings together the buildings and contents cover a furnished property needs, the liability that comes with inviting the public to stay, and protection for the booking income you would lose if the property could not be let after a claim.
The exact mix depends on how you let — occasional summer weeks, year-round serviced accommodation, or a combination of the two — but the core building blocks are consistent. The table below sets out the covers a specialist policy is assembled from and why each one matters when guests, rather than a long-term tenant, are the people staying in the property.
| Cover | Why it matters for a holiday let |
|---|---|
| Buildings | Rebuilds or repairs the structure after fire, storm, flood, subsidence, malicious damage or escape of water. It should be set at the full cost of rebuilding — not the market or purchase price — which matters especially for period, stone and listed properties. |
| Contents and furnishings | Replaces the furniture, beds, white goods, kitchenware and soft furnishings a let property depends on. Turnover is high, so breakage, wear and replacement are far more frequent than in a family home. |
| Public liability | Responds if a guest or visitor is injured, or their property damaged, and you are found responsible — a fall on a steep staircase, a scald from a hot tub, or an accident in a sloping coastal garden. Cover is commonly written to a substantial limit, because injury claims can be serious. |
| Employers’ liability | Required by law if you employ anyone, including part-time or casual cleaners, housekeepers and changeover staff, at a statutory minimum of £5m. Trading without it where it is needed is a criminal offence. |
| Loss of rental income | Replaces the bookings you cannot honour while the property is uninhabitable after an insured event, so a winter fire does not also cost you a booked-out summer. |
| Accidental damage by guests | Covers the everyday mishaps of paying guests — a broken window, wine on a carpet, a cracked hob — that a standard household policy would not entertain. |
| Malicious damage and theft by guests | Standard home policies typically exclude theft without forced entry, leaving guest theft and deliberate damage uninsured. A holiday let policy is built to include them. |
| Escape of water and unoccupancy | Water damage is the most frequent and costly claim, and the risk peaks in the empty gaps between lets. Cover continues through those periods provided you meet the policy’s unoccupancy conditions. |
| Alternative accommodation and loss of use | Meets the cost of rehousing or refunding guests, and of accommodating you, if the property becomes unusable after an insured event. |
| Legal expenses and emergency assistance | Often added to help with disputes, removing a guest who will not leave, and out-of-hours call-outs for emergencies such as a burst pipe. |
Not every let needs every element, and a sound policy is built around how the property is actually used rather than sold as a fixed bundle. What matters is that the combination reflects a commercial letting activity, because it is the commercial use that a residential policy will not stand behind.
A holiday let carries a different risk profile from both a family home and a conventional buy-to-let, and the difference is not merely one of degree — it changes what can go wrong and who is exposed. The root cause is turnover. A property that changes hands every few days sees far more people, far heavier use of its fixtures and far more opportunity for accidents than one occupied by a single household on a twelve-month tenancy.
Guests are members of the public. Every guest is on your premises by invitation, and you owe them a duty of care. Holiday properties in the South West often add features that raise that exposure — hot tubs, wood burners, swimming pools, mezzanines and galleries, steep cottage staircases, sloping coastal gardens and private steps down to a beach or quay. If a guest is injured and you are found responsible, public liability cover meets the compensation and legal costs, which can run high where injuries are serious. Insurers will usually want higher-risk features declared, and an undeclared hot tub or pool can undermine a later claim.
Staff you may not realise you employ. Almost every let relies on a cleaner or a changeover team, and many owners think of them as casual help rather than employees. In insurance terms, if you direct how and when the work is done they are usually treated as your employees, and employers’ liability cover becomes a legal requirement at a statutory minimum of £5m. It applies to part-time, seasonal and casual workers just as it does to permanent staff, and the duty is easy to miss precisely because changeover work is intermittent and informal.
Guest behaviour and damage. Paying guests are not tenants you have referenced and met. Most are careful, but a let has to absorb the occasional broken glass, scorched worktop or stained sofa, and it is exposed to deliberate damage and to theft of the very contents that make it lettable. Larger group bookings — stag and hen parties in particular — carry a higher risk of damage, and some insurers restrict or exclude them, so how you let matters as much as what you let.
Concentrated, seasonal income. Many South West lets earn the bulk of their money in a short peak around the school holidays and summer. If an insured event takes the property offline during those weeks, the loss is out of all proportion to the number of calendar days involved, and loss of rental income cover is what keeps a building claim from also becoming a lost season.
Want your holiday let looked over by a specialist? Or call 0117 325 0027.
Get a quote Call 0117 325 0027If one technical point separates a policy that pays out from one that does not, it is unoccupancy. Holiday lets stand empty by design — in the gaps between bookings, and often for long stretches over winter — and insurers treat an empty property as a materially higher risk. The cover does not simply switch off, but it comes with conditions, and those conditions are where claims are won or lost.
Why water is the central concern. Escape of water — from burst or frozen pipes, failed tanks, radiators, boilers, washing machines and dishwashers — is the most common and one of the most expensive causes of claim in let property. In an occupied home a leak is noticed and stopped quickly; in an empty cottage the same leak can run unseen for days or weeks, soaking floors, ceilings, joinery and the lime plaster and timber of an older building, and bringing damp and mould behind it. The risk climbs sharply in winter, when unheated pipes freeze and split.
What the unoccupancy conditions typically require. Once a property has been empty for a set number of consecutive days — the threshold varies between insurers — a policy will usually ask you to take specific precautions to keep escape-of-water and related cover live. These commonly include regular, documented inspections at stated intervals; keeping the heating running at a low background level through the colder months; or, for longer voids, turning the water off at the mains and draining the system down. The precise wording is what counts, and it differs from one policy to the next.
Getting it right in practice. For an active let with a managing agent or a local changeover team, meeting these conditions is usually straightforward — a logged visit between guests, a thermostat left on a frost setting, a note of when the property was last checked. The difficulty arises when a property drifts unexpectedly empty: a cancelled block of winter bookings, a stalled sale, or an owner away for a season. If the empty period passes the policy threshold and the conditions are not being met, cover for the most likely claim can quietly lapse. Telling your insurer when a property will stand empty for an extended spell is the simplest way to keep protection intact.
Setting the numbers correctly is where holiday let cover most often goes wrong, and the South West’s housing stock makes it more acute than most. Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are full of the properties guests most want to book — granite and stone cottages, thatched longhouses, cob-walled farmhouses, converted barns and Georgian townhouses — and those are exactly the buildings that are hardest to value for insurance.
Rebuild cost, not market value. Buildings cover must be set at the cost of rebuilding the property from the ground up, including demolition, debris removal, professional fees and compliance with current building regulations. That figure is different from what the property would sell for, and for older buildings it is frequently higher than owners assume. Traditional materials, lime mortar, slate roofs, thatch and the constraints of a listed building all push rebuilding costs up.
Underinsurance and the average clause. If the sum insured is set too low, insurers can apply what is known as the “average” clause and scale a claim down in proportion to the shortfall, so even a modest partial-loss claim is only partly met. Underinsurance, rather than any single peril, is the quiet reason many heritage-property claims disappoint. A professional rebuild-cost assessment is worth commissioning for anything older or unusual, and the figure should be reviewed as building costs move.
Listed and thatched properties. A listed building generally has to be reinstated using like-for-like materials and methods, which is slower and more costly, and thatch carries a distinct fire risk that a number of mainstream insurers will no longer take on. Both are better placed with an insurer that understands the construction than with one that treats the property as an ordinary house.
Coastal exposure and flood. Coastal Cornwall and Devon bring salt air, driving rain and storm exposure that accelerate wear and raise the odds of storm damage, while river valleys and low-lying resort towns carry flood risk that insurers price carefully and sometimes restrict. If a property has flooded before, or sits in a recognised flood area, cover needs arranging with that history disclosed in full — and it is far better to know the terms before a claim than after one.
Most holiday let disputes are not about the wording of an obscure clause. They come down to a handful of avoidable mistakes that leave an owner with a declined claim at the worst possible moment.
Owners rarely stop at one property. Many begin with a single coastal cottage and add others, or move into serviced accommodation and rent-to-rent arrangements where the letting is run as a business in its own right. Cover can and should keep pace with that without turning into a drawer full of separate policies.
Portfolio and multi-property cover. A single policy can bring several holiday lets under one schedule, with one renewal date and one point of contact. That makes cover easier to keep consistent and current, and it usually reflects the spread of risk across the properties rather than pricing each in isolation. It also makes it simpler to add or remove a property as the portfolio changes through the year.
Mixed and changing tenancy types. A property let to holidaymakers in summer might house a contractor on a longer stay over winter, or move between short lets and an assured shorthold tenancy across a year. Specialist cover can be arranged to flex across these letting types without having to set up a new policy each time the use changes, provided the arrangement is disclosed and agreed.
Serviced accommodation and rent-to-rent. Where you run serviced apartments — or let property you do not own under a rent-to-rent model — the risk looks more like a hospitality business than a single holiday home. Cover has to reflect that: liability for a steady stream of short-stay guests, contents you have fitted out, business interruption on the income, and clarity over who insures the building where you are not the freeholder. Agreeing those boundaries at the outset avoids the gap where each party assumes the other has cover in place.
Whatever the shape of the letting, the aim is the same — a policy that matches how guests actually use the property, set at the right sums insured, with the liability and unoccupancy terms that short-term letting in the South West genuinely requires.
A non-standard or high-value commercial risk is advice-led. A specialist broker searches the market rather than one insurer’s panel, presents the risk properly — which matters under the Insurance Act 2015 duty of fair presentation — and gets the details that decide a claim right. Buying a packaged policy direct can be fine for a simple, standard risk; for the risks on this page it rarely is.
Apex Insurance Brokers is an independent commercial insurance broker established in 2009 and based in Bristol, owned entirely by its directors and directly authorised by the FCA since 2016. We are not tied to any single insurer or scheme, we do not run our own policy or underwriting, and we have no placement quotas. We have access to over 30 markets, including Lloyd’s syndicates via wholesale, which is what lets us place a non-standard, high-value or hard-to-place risk that a packaged insurer might decline. We usually return three or four competing quotes set out so you can compare them like for like, every client has a named broker from first quote to renewal, and every claim gets director-level attention rather than a call-centre queue.
A standard home policy will not cover a property let commercially to paying guests, and letting on one can invalidate the cover entirely. Short-term letting needs a holiday let or serviced accommodation policy written for commercial use, guest liability and the empty periods between bookings.
Usually not. Buy-to-let policies are built around assured shorthold tenancies and long-term occupants, not nightly and weekly guests. Using one for holiday letting can leave you underinsured or void the cover, so short-term letting needs a policy arranged specifically for it.
If you employ anyone to clean or manage changeovers and you direct their work, employers’ liability is a legal requirement at a statutory minimum of £5m, even where the work is part-time or casual. It is one of the most commonly overlooked duties for holiday let owners.
Buildings should be insured for the full cost of rebuilding the property — including demolition, professional fees and current building regulations — not its market or purchase price. For older, stone, thatched or listed properties the rebuild figure is often higher than owners expect, so a professional assessment is worth commissioning.
Cover continues through the gaps between bookings, but once a property has been empty for a set number of days most policies ask you to meet unoccupancy conditions — typically regular inspections, background heating in winter, or draining the water system. Meet them and escape-of-water cover stays live; miss them and related claims can be refused.
No. The host protection offered by booking platforms is limited in scope and is not a substitute for insurance — the platforms say so themselves. It does not replace buildings, contents, public liability or loss-of-income cover, so you still need your own policy.
Yes. A portfolio policy can bring several properties under one schedule with a single renewal date, which keeps cover consistent and makes it easier to add or remove a property as your portfolio changes through the year.
It needs specialist handling rather than being a problem. Listed buildings generally must be reinstated with like-for-like materials, and thatch carries a fire risk that some mainstream insurers avoid, so both are better placed with an insurer that understands the construction and priced on an accurate rebuild cost.
Coastal and flood-exposed properties in Devon and Cornwall can usually be insured, but the history must be disclosed in full so the terms are clear from the outset. These risks are priced carefully and sometimes restricted, and it is far better to understand the cover before a claim than to find a gap after one.
Tell us about your property and how you let it, and we can arrange holiday let cover built around short-term letting in the South West. Or call 0117 325 0027.
Get a quote Call 0117 325 0027Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales, company number 07014570. This page is general information, not advice on your individual circumstances, and it does not guarantee that cover will be available or on what terms.
