Rural hospitality: Problems of legal regulation of guest safety

Abstract

This study investigates the problems of legal regulation of the safety of visitors – guests of rural estates during the provision of rural hospitality services. The relevance of this study is conditioned upon the urgent need to develop special legislation that would reflect the specifics of such a new area of agricultural diversification for Ukraine as rural hospitality, specifically one of the defining aspects for the development of this sphere – the safety of guests of rural estates. The purpose of this study was to characterize the state of legal support for the outlined area and formulate proposals for improving the legal regulation of the safety of visitors/guests of rural estates. The methodological framework of this paper included a set of general scientific and special legal methods of scientific cognition, namely dialectical, system-structural, formal logical, system analysis, and formal legal methods. As a result of the conducted study, the term “safety of rural hospitality” was defined in broad and narrow meanings, and the external and internal levels of safety in rural hospitality were also distinguished. The possibility of applying tourism legislation to regulate external security relations in rural hospitality was substantiated. The need to regulate internal security relations in rural hospitality in a special regulation on rural hospitality in the form of a law was proved. It is proposed to establish in this prospective regulation an imperative rule regarding the conclusion of a written agreement on rural hospitality services, and the substantial terms and conditions of such a contract were defined. A proposal was put forward to develop a model agreement for the provision of rural hospitality services. To streamline the safe rendering of services within rural hospitality to attract guests of a rural estate to perform agricultural work, it was proposed to develop safety instructions for attracting guests of rural estates to perform agricultural work. The obtained conclusions will help in the development of legislation on rural hospitality and can also be used in theoretical and applied scientific research on the specific features of legal regulation of relations concerning rural hospitality.