Delhi Bed and Breakfast Scheme (Incredible India Bed and Breakfast Establishments)

What is the Delhi Bed and Breakfast Scheme?

Delhi Bed and Breakfast Scheme is the state homestay registration scheme run by the Department of Tourism, Government of NCT of Delhi, under The National Capital Territory of Delhi (Incredible India) Bed and Breakfast Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2007. The Act provides for the registration and regulation of the Bed and Breakfast Establishment Scheme across the whole of the NCT of Delhi.

The idea is simple. A Delhi family with spare bedrooms in the house it lives in registers those rooms as a Bed and Breakfast establishment, and legally takes paying guests who get lodging and breakfast in a real home rather than a hotel. Delhi Tourism markets registered properties and publishes a directory of them, and its "Stay in Delhi" listing carries registered B&B establishments alongside hotels.

The Act is deliberately narrow. It does not apply to other types of transient accommodation such as hotels, motels, guest houses, boarding houses or lodging houses. Establishments in Delhi already registered by the Central Government under the Incredible India Bed and Breakfast Establishments Scheme are deemed to be approved and registered under this Act.

Who does what

• Prescribed authority, an officer or authority notified by the government who receives applications, registers establishments, issues certificates and maintains the directory.
• Classification committee: constituted by the prescribed authority to inspect premises, point out deficiencies, evaluate food and services, and classify the establishment.
• Appellate authority. The Principal Secretary or Secretary of the Tourism Department, or another officer appointed by the government.
• Revising authority. The Lieutenant Governor or an officer notified by him.

Who can and cannot register a Bed and Breakfast in Delhi?

You can apply if your premises meets every one of these conditions:

• The premises is purely a residential unit and you, the owner, physically reside there with your family.
• You let out not more than two-thirds of the bedrooms, consisting of a minimum of one double bedroom and a maximum of five double bedrooms.
• Each let-out bedroom has an attached bathroom with a wet commode, adequate water and power supply, proper ventilation and lighting, suitable furniture and other facilities.
• The premises is in good repair and maintains the required standard of hygiene, cleanliness and safety, including fire safety.
• The premises has adequate parking, either within it or in its vicinity.
• The classification committee recommends the premises for registration.

You cannot apply, or will be disqualified, if:

• The property is a hotel, motel, guest house, boarding house or lodging house, the Act expressly does not apply to these.
• You do not live in the house yourself with your family.
• You want to let out more than five double bedrooms or more than two-thirds of the bedrooms.
• The owner has been convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment exceeding one month.
• The owner is an undercharged insolvent.
• The establishment's name has already been removed from the directory under section 10 of the Act.

A room under this Act means a bedroom with not more than two beds, plus provision for extra beds for children accompanying the guest. That definition is what makes "five double bedrooms" a hard ceiling rather than a flexible one.

How to apply for Bed and Breakfast registration in Delhi

1. Check your house against the six conditions above; residential unit, owner in residence, room ceiling, attached bathrooms, repair and safety, parking. Applications fail most often on the attached-bathroom and parking conditions.
2. Download the rules and application form from the Bed and Breakfast page on delhitourism.gov.in, which carries the "List of Rule and forms for B&B Scheme Registration" and the Registration and Regulation Bill, 2007.
3. Fill the prescribed form and pay the registration fee prescribed under the rules, and file it with the prescribed authority.
4. Await transmission to the classification committee. The prescribed authority sends the application to the committee for comments and report.
5. Host the inspection. The classification committee inspects the premises and points out deficiencies, if any.
6. Rectify the deficiencies within the stipulated time, to the satisfaction of the committee. Failure to do so results in rejection of the application.
7. Receive the classification. The committee evaluates the standard of food, facilities and services against the prescribed checklist and classifies the establishment — Delhi Tourism lists Silver and Gold categories, assigned subject to space and conveniences.
8. Collect the certificate of registration, which the prescribed authority issues on being satisfied with the committee's report. The whole process must finish within three months of the application being received, and the applicant must be told the result.

What obligations does a registered B&B owner take on?

The Act loads a specific set of duties on the owner, and these are the provisions that most first-time hosts underestimate:

• Maintain a guest register. A register or computerised electronic record with the prescribed particulars of guests, available for inspection at all times, renewed year on year and preserved for the prescribed period.
• Report guests fortnightly, send information about guests staying in the establishment to the local authority and the police every fortnight, on the 15th and the last day of every month.
• Display the guest list at the establishment.
• Get employees police-verified.
• Display at a conspicuous place the certificate of registration, the type of food offered, the schedule of charges for accommodation and food, the names of employees, and the check-out time.
• Provide good quality food prepared in hygienic conditions, and tell guests in advance about the accommodation, facilities, food, rates and opening and closing times.
• Deliver what was promised, and inform the prescribed authority within a week of any change in the facilities approved at the time of registration.

The restrictions are equally specific. A registered owner shall not maintain a front office. The entire house must look like a normal residential house, and shall not carry out or allow tours and travel, sight-seeing, transport, handicrafts or similar commercial activity in or from the establishment, affect the privacy and rights of neighbours, misrepresent the establishment, or indulge in touting.

Guests, in turn, must give correct particulars, behave in a way that does not disturb the locality, must not run a separate kitchen in the establishment, must pay for damage they cause beyond normal wear and tear, and must not allow any other person to stay overnight.

What are the financial benefits of registering?

Registration converts an informal arrangement into a legally protected one, and the Act attaches four concrete concessions:

1. No licence needed under the Sarais Act 1867, the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957, the New Delhi Municipal Council Act 1994, the Delhi Police Act 1978 or any other relevant Act, for providing food or lodging at the establishment.
2. Domestic power and water tariff, the establishment is not treated as a commercial unit, so utilities are billed at residential rates.
3. Property tax at residential-tenanted rates, restricted to the portion let out and to the period of occupancy, fully or partly as the case may be.
4. No Value Added Tax under the Delhi Value Added Tax Act, 2004 and no luxury tax under the Delhi Tax on Luxuries Act, 1996, as provided in the Act.

What happens if the rules are broken?

The Act makes every offence under it cognizable, triable only by a court of a Metropolitan Magistrate, with civil court jurisdiction barred. The penalty schedule is:

Where a certificate is revoked, the holder must return it within seven days of the revocation order. The prescribed authority publishes the names and addresses of establishments whose registration has been revoked by notification in the official Gazette. Restoration is possible if the authority is satisfied there are sufficient grounds, on payment of the prescribed fee and completion of formalities.

How do appeals and guest complaints work?

A guest who is misled, or who does not get the food, facilities or amenities promised, may file a written complaint with the prescribed authority, by fax, email or post, with the complainant's permanent address. The authority enquires, gives the owner a reasonable opportunity, and either rejects the complaint or removes the establishment's name from the directory.

An owner aggrieved by an order may appeal to the appellate authority within 30 days of the order being communicated, with condonation possible for sufficient cause. The appellant may be represented by a legal practitioner, and the appellate proceedings must be completed within four months. The revising authority may call for records within 90 days of the appellate order and pass a final order, against which no further appeal lies.

Where do I get the forms and help?

• Bed and Breakfast page on delhitourism.gov.in, which carries the list of rules and forms for B&B scheme registration, the Registration and Regulation Bill 2007, the list of available properties under B&B, and photographs of registered accommodation.
• Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC), 18-A, DDA SCO Complex, Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024.
• Stay in Delhi section of delhitourism.gov.in, which lists registered B&B establishments and is where a newly registered property becomes visible to travellers.

Registration is granted only by the prescribed authority under the 2007 Act. No travel agent or online platform can register your home under this scheme on your behalf, and any "listing fee" charged for that is not a government fee.

How to check your application status

There is no online tracking portal for a Bed and Breakfast registration filed under the 2007 Act, so the follow-up is manual, not a login-and-check system.

1. Note your acknowledgment details. When the prescribed authority accepts your form, it records the date of receipt, this is the date from which the three-month decision clock under the Act runs. Keep the receiving stamp or acknowledgment slip; it is the only proof you have of when the clock started.
2. Track the three-month window, not a status field. Because the Act obliges the prescribed authority to decide and inform the applicant within three months of the application being received, the practical way to check progress is to count from your acknowledgment date rather than expect a portal update.
3. Ask where the file actually is. An application in this process moves through two hands, first the prescribed authority, then the classification committee for inspection and report, before coming back for a final decision. If you call or visit, ask specifically whether the file has reached the committee yet, whether the inspection has happened, and whether any deficiencies were flagged, since each of those is a distinct stage the file can be sitting at.
4. Follow up in person or in writing at DTTDC. Contact the Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation office at 18-A, DDA SCO Complex, Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024, quoting your application date and the property address, since the record is filed by these details rather than by an online reference number.
5. Watch for a deficiency notice. If the classification committee's inspection turned up shortfalls, for example the attached-bathroom or parking conditions, the file will not move to a decision until you rectify them within the time the committee gives you. A status enquiry at this stage should specifically ask whether such a notice has been issued, since it is the most common reason a file stalls past three months.
6. Treat silence past three months as a follow-up trigger, not a rejection. The Act requires the applicant to be informed of the result, so if the three-month period has passed with no communication, that is the point to escalate the enquiry with the prescribed authority rather than assume the application has lapsed.

Common reasons for rejection

Because this is a physical-premises registration decided after an inspection, almost every rejection traces back to something the classification committee found on the ground, not a paperwork technicality alone.

• Missing attached bathrooms. Each bedroom being let out must have its own attached bathroom with a wet commode. A shared or common bathroom for two or more guest bedrooms fails this condition outright, and the fix is to complete the attachment before reapplying, not to argue the point at inspection.
• No adequate parking. The Act requires adequate parking within the premises or in its vicinity. Where the house has no dedicated parking and the surrounding street cannot reasonably absorb guest vehicles, the committee can flag this as a deficiency; resolving it means securing and documenting a real parking arrangement before the inspection, not after.
• Owner does not live in the house. Registration is only for a residential unit where the owner physically resides with their family. An owner who has moved out, rents the whole house out, or manages it remotely does not meet this condition, and there is no workaround because the requirement is personal residence, not just ownership.
• Room count outside the ceiling. Letting out more than five double bedrooms, or more than two-thirds of the bedrooms in the house, is a hard cap. Applications that propose more rooms are not partially approved for the allowed number; they are asked to revise the proposal to fit within the ceiling before the committee will recommend registration.
• Fire safety or general repair shortfalls. The premises must be in good repair and meet the required standard of hygiene, cleanliness and safety, including fire safety. Committees commonly flag missing fire extinguishers, poor electrical wiring, or general disrepair, all of which need to be fixed and the property made available for a fresh inspection.
• Deficiencies not rectified in time. Even when the initial inspection only raises minor issues, the Act specifically provides that failing to rectify them within the stipulated time results in rejection. Applicants who treat the committee's deficiency list as a suggestion rather than a deadline are the ones most often rejected at this stage, so the fix is to complete every listed item within the window the committee gives, not just the ones that seem important.
• Disqualifying personal history. An owner convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment exceeding one month, or an owner who is an undischarged insolvent, is disqualified from registration under the Act. Neither of these can be fixed through documentation; they are eligibility bars, not paperwork gaps.
• Prior removal from the directory. If the establishment's name has already been removed from the Delhi Tourism directory under section 10 of the Act, for example after an earlier revocation, a fresh application from the same establishment will be refused unless that removal has first been reversed through the restoration process, on payment of the prescribed fee and completion of the required formalities.
• False or incomplete information in the form. Wilfully giving false information in the application is itself a punishable offence under the Act, separate from the registration being refused. Applicants should treat every field, especially room counts, ownership details and residency status, as something the committee will verify on site, not just read on paper.