Terms & conditions

Last updated 9 September 2026

1. Who these terms are with

These terms are between you, the owner or authorised manager of a property, and Hive International Group Ltd, trading as Hive Stewards UK, company number 17368328, registered in England and Wales.

Use of the website itself is covered separately by our website terms of use. They apply alongside the individual service agreement we sign with you. If there is any conflict or inconsistency between these terms and the service agreement, the service agreement prevails to the extent of the conflict.

2. What we do

We provide short-let management services, which may include guest communications, pricing and calendar management, changeover and cleaning coordination, maintenance callouts, listing setup and compliance support. Your service agreement sets out which of these apply to your property.

We act as your agent. We do not lease your property, we are not a party to any booking, and the contract for each stay is between you and the guest under the booking platform's own terms.

3. What you're responsible for

Some of these are duties the law places on you; others are conditions we set before taking a property on:

• Holding legal title, or the owner's written authority, to let the property
• Obtaining consent from your mortgage lender and, for leasehold property, your freeholder
• Keeping buildings and contents insurance in force that covers paying guests, with public liability cover
• Meeting all safety duties, including gas, electrical and fire safety, and providing us with current certificates
• Declaring and paying tax on your letting income
• Registering the property under any scheme that applies, and giving us the details we need to display a registration number
• Telling us about any camera at the property, including video doorbells, so that it can be disclosed in the listing and to guests. Cameras must not be placed inside the property or anywhere a guest would expect privacy, and we do not have access to any footage
• Telling us promptly about anything that affects bookings, such as building works or a change of ownership

We may pause or refuse bookings if a safety certificate has lapsed or insurance is not in place.

4. Fees

Our management fee is the percentage of booking income set out in your service agreement, calculated after booking platform commission and before any cleaning or maintenance costs. One-off setup work is charged at the fee quoted before the work starts.

Cleaning, laundry, consumables and repairs are arranged by us as your agent and are charged at cost, with no markup, and are either deducted from payouts or invoiced monthly. These are your costs, incurred on your behalf; we recharge them to you without adding a margin, and they are not part of what you pay us for our own services. We will not spend more than the limit agreed with you on any single item without asking first, except where an emergency risks injury or serious damage.

We are not currently registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to our fees: the prices we advertise are the amounts you pay. If we become VAT registered, we will update our advertised prices before any change applies to you, and any VAT chargeable will then be added at the rate in force and shown separately on your invoice.

Invoices are payable within 14 days. Late payment may attract interest and reasonable recovery costs: for business customers, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, currently 8% above the Bank of England base rate; for consumers, only such interest and costs as the general law allows.

5. Money and payouts

We do not hold client money. Guest payments are collected by the booking platform and paid to you directly, or split to us as co-host where the platform supports it, so your income reaches your own account without passing through ours.

Our fees are either taken as a platform co-host split or invoiced to you monthly, and costs we incur on your behalf are recharged in the same way. We do not operate a client account and we do not receive rent or deposits for onward payment to you. If that ever changes, we will tell you first, and we will not do it without the protections the law then requires.

6. Access, keys and security

You'll give us the access we need to manage the property. Keys and codes are held securely, shared only with contractors working on the property, and returned or reset when this agreement ends.

7. Bookings, cancellations and damage

We'll follow the cancellation policy set on your listings. If you cancel a confirmed booking for a reason that isn't an emergency, any platform penalty and the cost of rehousing guests are yours.

We'll report guest damage promptly and help you claim through the platform's damage cover or your insurance, but we don't guarantee recovery and we're not liable for damage caused by guests.

8. Data protection

Each of us is an independent controller of the personal data we hold for our own purposes, and each is responsible for complying with UK data protection law. Where we handle personal data solely on your documented instructions for a particular operation, we act as your processor for that operation and the service agreement will contain the data-processing terms the law requires.

Guest personal data reaches us through the booking platform or from you for your direct bookings so that we can run the stay. We use it only for that purpose and for as long as our privacy policy says. If either of us suffers a personal data breach affecting the other's data, we will tell the other without undue delay and cooperate on putting it right and on any report to the Information Commissioner's Office.

9. Confidentiality

Neither of us will disclose the other's confidential information (including access codes, guest details, financial figures and the terms of your service agreement) except to people who need it to do the job, where the law requires it, or where the information is already public. This continues for three years after the agreement ends.

We may name you as a client or use anonymised figures in marketing only if you agree in writing first.

10. Our liability

We'll carry out our services with reasonable care and skill. We're not liable for loss of profit or anticipated bookings, for the acts of guests, or for the acts of contractors you instruct directly.

Our total liability in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't lawfully be limited.

We hold professional indemnity and public liability insurance. Details are available on request.

11. Things outside our control

Neither of us is liable for failing to meet an obligation because of something genuinely outside our reasonable control, such as flood, fire, extreme weather, power or internet failure, a booking platform outage, epidemic, strike, or a change in the law that makes performance unlawful. If that happens we'll tell you as soon as we can and do what we reasonably can to limit the effect. If it lasts more than 30 days, either of us may end the agreement by written notice without further liability, with fees due up to that date.

12. Ending the agreement

Either of us can end the agreement by giving 30 days' written notice. Bookings already confirmed will be honoured and our fee remains payable on them. Either of us may end it immediately for a serious breach that isn't put right within 14 days of being raised in writing.

On termination we'll hand back access to your accounts, transfer any guest correspondence you need, and return keys. Your listings, reviews and guest history remain yours throughout.

13. If you are a consumer

Most of our clients contract with us for a letting business. If you are an individual acting wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession, you are a consumer. For a distance or off-premises service contract covered by the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, you normally have until the end of 14 days after the day the contract is made to cancel without giving a reason. Your statutory rights are not reduced by these terms.

To cancel, tell us within that period. Any clear statement is enough, and you can send it however suits you: by email to hello@hivestewards.com, by post to Hive International Group Ltd, 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, or by telephone. It is enough that you send your cancellation before the 14 days are up, and we will acknowledge it in writing whichever route you use. We make any refund due without undue delay and within 14 days of being informed, after any proportionate charge lawfully due for work you expressly asked us to begin.

We do not begin work during the 14 days unless you ask us to. Our onboarding form asks you to confirm two things separately, and neither is ticked for you:

• that you are asking us to begin during the 14-day cancellation period; and
• that you understand you may then be charged a proportionate amount for work already done if you cancel, and that the right to cancel is lost once the service has been fully performed.

We record both confirmations with the date you gave them, and we send you a dated copy of what you submitted within two working days, so you have your own written record of what you agreed to. If you leave them unticked, we simply wait until the 14 days are up before starting.

Having asked us to start, you can still cancel, but you will owe a proportionate amount for the work done up to the point you tell us. Once a service you asked for has been fully performed within that period, the right to cancel it is lost. Nothing in these terms affects your other statutory rights.

To cancel within the period you can use the form below, though you do not have to:

You can also send the notice online, which records the date and time it reached us. As soon as your notice is recorded, the website automatically attempts to email you an acknowledgement immediately. We acknowledge online cancellations in a form you can keep, without delay. An email delivery problem does not change when your notice was recorded.

14. Complaints

If something goes wrong, email hello@hivestewards.com with the property address and what happened. We'll acknowledge within 2 working days and give you a full response within 14 days.

If you're still unhappy after our final response, you can ask for the matter to be referred to mediation: a mediator we agree between us within 21 days or, failing agreement, one nominated by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), with the mediator's cost shared equally.

15. General

We may update these terms by giving you 30 days' notice. If a change is materially to your disadvantage and you contract as a consumer, you may end the agreement before that change takes effect, with nothing further to pay beyond fees already due and bookings already confirmed. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply, and a court may replace the offending part with the nearest lawful equivalent.

These terms and your service agreement are the whole of what we have agreed, and they replace anything said or written beforehand. That does not exclude liability for anything said fraudulently. Where you contract as a consumer, it also does not affect information we gave you about the service that the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats as a term of the contract.

We may subcontract parts of the work, such as cleaning and trades, but we remain responsible to you for it. Neither of us may transfer the agreement itself to someone else without the other's written agreement, which won't be unreasonably refused; if you sell the property, tell us and we'll deal with it sensibly.

Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

Notices under these terms should be sent by email to hello@hivestewards.com and, from us, to the email address you last gave us. An email is enough to end the agreement; you may also write to our registered office if you prefer. Other contractual notices are treated as received the next working day. This does not defer statutory cancellations: sending before the cancellation deadline is sufficient, and we acknowledge the notice without delay.

If either of us doesn't enforce a term straight away, that doesn't mean we've given up the right to enforce it later.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of any mandatory law of the country where you live.

16. Language

These terms were written in English, and English is the language that governs their interpretation. We may make a translation available for convenience. If a translation and this English version differ, this English version prevails. Nothing in this clause affects any right you have under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to terms expressed in plain and intelligible language, or the rule that where a term could be read in more than one way, the reading most favourable to you applies.