Hotel Operator Liability Under The New Book 7 Of The Belgian Civil Code

Following our introductory post on the new Book 7 “Special contracts” of the Civil Code, we turn in this publication to a provision of direct relevance to the hospitality and leisure sector: the rules on hotel operator liability, now set out in Articles 7.4.47 to 7.4.54 of the Civil Code.

These articles replace the former Articles 1952 to 1954quater of the old Civil Code, traditionally known as the rules on “hotel deposit” (dépôt hôtelier/hotelbewaargeving). As we explain below, the substance of the regime is, by design, essentially unchanged, but the renumbering and restructuring are worth knowing, as is the legislative thinking behind the choice to leave the regime untouched.

It is worth recalling, as the parliamentary history of the original 1970 bill implementing the Paris Convention shows, that the former regime itself already represented a deliberate alignment of Belgian law with an international minimum standard. The 1970 legislative history explains that the pre-existing