Insurance for hotels and motels

Hotels and motels log 3.8 recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers, 65 percent above the private-industry figure of 2.3 and number 13 of the 54 trades on this site. That record is what an underwriter sees first, and it is why the checklist below leans on workers' compensation and liability limits.

Tailor the checklist

1Hotels and motels 3.8 per 100
2Private industry 2.3 per 100
3Rank of 54 #13

Total recordable cases per 100 full-time workers, 2024: this trade against private industry and the 54 trades on this site. Bars to scale. Source: BLS SOII Table 1.

Recordable cases

3.8

per 100 FTE, 2024

Serious cases (DART)

2.3

61% of all cases

Fatal injuries, 2024

≈2.4 per 100,000 FTE

Workforce

1,434,325

full-time equivalents

What goes wrong in this trade

Guest slips, pool and fitness-room injuries, assaults where security is alleged inadequate, and housekeeping strains for staff; card data and booking systems add a cyber exposure.

The checklist for hotels and motels

GL
General liability
Guest injuries on the premises, from lobbies to pools.
Not required by federal law. Required in practice by most contracts, landlords and many state contractor licences.
WC
Workers' compensation
Required once you have employees in nearly every state.
Required by state law in nearly every state once you have employees; the employee-count threshold and exemptions are set state by state and are not reproduced here.
Cyber
Cyber liability
Card payments and guest records in booking systems.
Not required by law; required by some health-care and corporate contracts.
HNOA
Hired and non-owned auto
Staff running errands or shuttles in their own or rented vehicles.
Not required by law; commonly added to GL or auto.
Umbrella
Commercial umbrella / excess
Premises claims involving serious injury can exceed primary limits.
Not required by law; required by many general contractors and commercial landlords.

Red tags mark policy types that a law or licence usually requires; green tags are what contracts, landlords and clients ask for. Tailor the list for your situation (no employees, no vehicles, alcohol) with the checklist tool.

What the injury record means for the premium

Hotels and motels: total recordable cases, cases with days away/restriction/transfer (DART) and cases with days away from work, per 100 FTE, 2024, columns to scale.

Workers' compensation is rated on payroll and class, then adjusted by your own loss history, so a trade with 3.8 cases per 100 workers starts from a high base rate before an underwriter has looked at you. Worse, 61 percent of those cases involved days away from work, restriction or transfer — the expensive kind. The practical consequence: a documented safety programme and a clean experience modifier are worth more here than shopping carriers.

The nearest trades by injury rate are used household and office goods moving (4.3), school and employee bus operators (3.3), siding contractors (3.2); the same payroll insured in those classes would start from a similar workers' comp base.

Legal, licence or contract?

Fixed by law

Workers' compensation once you have employees, in nearly every state (threshold and exemptions set by the state; not reproduced here).
State minimum auto liability on any vehicle the business operates.
Liquor liability, where the state liquor licence requires it.

Asked for by contracts and licences

Getting quotes. Take this checklist to a broker who writes hotels and motels — ask them to quote each line separately so you can see what the 3.8-per-100 class rate is doing to the workers' comp figure versus the liability lines. This site does not sell or quote insurance.

Sources: BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, Table 1 (2024), incidence rates per 100 full-time workers; BLS SOII Table 3 (2024), hours worked by detailed industry; BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, Table A-1 (2024). Fatal rate per 100,000 FTE is derived (count ÷ hours × 200,000,000) and approximate. Checked 2026-10-24.