No one likes paying for insurance, least of all the aspiring small business looking to cut the burden of overhead costs wherever they can be found. Unfortunately, however, cost-cutting can often result in damaging quality cutting. In the case of financial protection for small businesses, this can mean insufficient insurance cover. Yet low cost business insurance need not mean inadequate cover.

Most businesses will also be only too aware of the costs, risks and uncertainties of employing staff. One important aspect of this arises from your liability as a hotel owner. Legally (with a few special exceptions) if you employ staff you must have employers' liability insurance, which means that if your staff are injured or become sick as a result of their duties, then they can claim against you and your insurance.

Just as it suggests, arranging guest house liability insurance is essentially a question of ensuring that your liabilities as a guest house owner are suitably and sufficiently covered. Whether your guest house is large or small, chic or more modest there can be a surprisingly wide range of liabilities to which the business can be exposed.

Your roadside motel of course relies on the passing motorist, but motel insurance could prove equally indispensable if the business is to survive some of the risks and perils it can encounter during its normal operations. The following represents a brief guide to some of those risks.

The contents of a hotel - or, for that matter, a guest house or bed and breakfast - represent a considerable investment. Not only is there the furniture, but all the linen and equipment, fixtures and fittings, and the stock you need to carry.

There are well-run hotels and then there are those that echo the Basil Fawlty school of hotel management depicted in the 1970s TV comedy. But hotelier's public liability is no laughing matter and can, indeed, spell such financial disaster in the event of a sizeable claim that a once viable establishment has to close down.

From the most modest of establishments to more serious, year-round bed and breakfast businesses, the subject of insurance might not be at the top of everyone's list of essential matters to address. This could prove an expensively shortsighted omission, however.

If you're running a hotel then you have probably wondered from time to time about the extent of your hotel insurance cover.

The blunt fact of it is that if you do not have guest house insurance, you could face financial ruin - however small your establishment and business is.

Guest house insurance goes far beyond the building in which the guest accommodation is situated. 

Hotel insurance can be put together as a package that covers all of your risks and potential liabilities, from the moment the guests book their rooms to the second they leave. 

If you run your own Bed & Breakfast business, or are thinking of starting up this kind of business, then you probably already realise that you will need some form of insurance policy in place to protect you. 

Insuring a lodge or a guest house can be very different to insuring your home. The very fact that you welcome guests into your lodge means that you may need to take out specialist lodge insurance cover to ensure that you and your business are fully protected.  

Running a guest house isn't easy - taking care of your guests, making bookings, arranging staff, and keeping on top of stocks, sales and accounting, can easily consume all of your time. Yet all of your hard work could be undone and your business brought to its knees if you do not have the right type of guest house insurance.

Sourcing and buying the right kind of B&B insurance may not be as simple as it seems. You may live in your bed and breakfast but this isn't just like insuring your home.