Running a hotel kids club: registration, collection rules and a day's plan

A hotel kids club is a supervised, age-banded play program with fixed hours. Running one well needs four written things: a published promise (ages, hours, whether parents stay), a signed registration form, a collection rule that releases a child only to a named adult, and rules for allergies, medicines, illness and photographs.

It is five past five, the club closed at five, and the adult at the desk is not the adult who signed the form this morning. What happens in the next ten minutes was decided months ago, or it was not decided at all. This article gives you the four written documents that decide it: the published promise, the registration form, the collection rule and the day's plan, plus the staffing and health rules that hold them up.

What is a hotel kids club, and what does it promise?#

A hotel kids club is a supervised, age-banded play program that runs to fixed hours inside the hotel, with a register of the children in it. It is not a nursery and it is not babysitting.

Separate the club from three neighbours before you write anything. A nursery is all-day care for children below school age. A babysitter is one adult with one child, usually in the room. A play centre is a room a parent enters with the child and stays in. Each carries a different promise and a different staffing model, and parents will assume whichever one they know from home unless you tell them otherwise.

Publish the promise in writing: age bands, hours and last admission, whether a parent must stay, capacity, languages spoken, whether food is included, whether the club is free, and what happens in bad weather. If the hotel does not publish it, parents invent it at the pool. Put the same promise where the booking is made, at the front desk and on the club door: three versions of the hours is how a complaint starts.

The register is the operating document. It holds the children present, by name, with the time in and the time out. Everything else in this article hangs off it. Write what the club does, not what cannot happen; a promise of supervision is a service promise, not a guarantee.

Keep the club separate from the hotel's animation program, even when they share a space. The animation team performs for a crowd; the club is responsible for named children. The two can share a manager, never a headcount. If you are designing the wider family offer, start with what parents check before and during a stay family-friendly hotel service: what parents check before and during a stay.

Does a hotel kids club need a childcare licence in Türkiye?#

No Turkish text was found, checked 7 November 2026, that makes a hotel kids club subject to nursery or childcare licensing. That is the absence of a rule, not a permission, so confirm your own case with a lawyer.

The nursery regulation covers nurseries, not hotels. The Ministry of Family and Social Services regulation, first published in the Resmî Gazete of 30 April 2015 (No. 29342), governs nurseries (kreş) and day-care centres (gündüz bakımevi) run by real persons and private legal entities, for children aged 0 to 66 months, under Social Services Law No. 2828. It does not mention hotels.

What changed recently matters. An amendment published in the Resmî Gazete of 27 December 2025 (No. 33120) (opens in a new tab), in force that day, renamed the regulation and removed private children's clubs (çocuk kulübü, defined in the 2015 text as institutions serving children aged 6 to 12) from its scope. Existing private children's clubs complete their transition under provisional Article 32 of the Ministry of National Education's Private Education Institutions Regulation.

What does apply to your hotel is the tourism regulation. The Regulation on the Qualifications of Tourism Facilities (Presidential Decision No. 1134) lists a children's play centre or play unit among a facility's general areas in Article 14(5)(p), and requires certified or trained staff to work in such units in Article 15(1). Read both with your adviser rather than from a summary.

Two more checks. Tour operator contracts and agency standards can add requirements of their own, including age limits and supervision rules; read the contract before you design the club, not after. And watch the two facts that move a club toward the institution the nursery regulation describes: the age band and the hours. All-day care of children under 66 months looks different from a two-hour play session for school-age children. Write both down and take advice on your own case.

Date the check. Regulations change, and the December 2025 amendment is the proof. Record the date you last checked and repeat it each season.

What goes on the kids club registration form?#

One form per child per stay, signed by the parent or legal guardian, kept where staff can reach it in seconds, and destroyed when the retention period your adviser sets has passed.

The child's details come first: full name, date of birth rather than age alone (a birthday mid-stay moves the child's band), room number and departure date. The departure date is what tells staff when the form can be closed.

Then the adults. Parent names and mobile numbers, the named adults who may collect with their relationship to the child, and a line for anyone who may not. A blank line is not a no; ask the parent to write it.

Health comes next: allergies, asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, any condition staff must know about, and medicines handed in with dose, time and storage instructions. Under Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law, health data is a special category: the consolidated text of Law No. 6698, Article 6 (opens in a new tab) prohibits processing it except in listed cases, including the person's explicit consent. Keep the notes with the staff who need them.

Consents belong on the form as separate tick boxes, not one blanket signature: photographs, water play, walking outside the hotel grounds, applying sunscreen. Bundled consent is not consent. The form ends with a signature, printed name, date and time, plus a fresh signature whenever anything on the form changes during the stay.

Retention: keep the form for the stay plus the period your adviser sets, then destroy it. Health notes are special-category data and should not sit in a drawer for years. For the wider framework around this paperwork, see a child protection policy for hotels a child protection policy for hotels: what to write, train and report.

Photographs and consent#

Treat a child's photograph as needing its own separate, signed parental consent, taken apart from the rest of the form, and check with your adviser how KVKK applies to photographs of children. Honor a withdrawal the same day, and keep names, room numbers and school uniforms out of captions.

How do you hand over and collect a child?#

The club releases a child only to an adult named on the form, checked the same way every time, with the time written on the register.

The wristband carries a number and the child's age band, not the child's name in large letters. Staff match the number to the register; a stranger in the corridor learns nothing from it.

Drop-off is a two-minute conversation, not a signature: sleep, toilet, medicine, mood, and who is collecting. The parent signs and the time is written. Collection starts with a question, not a recognition: staff ask the adult's name, check the form, and ask for identity documents if the adult is not known to them. A familiar face is not a check.

A change of collector comes in writing from the parent who signed, at the front desk, not as a message to a staff member's phone. The register is amended and initialled. A child who wants to leave alone is a decision the parent makes in writing, per age band, before the stay; staff do not improvise it at the door.

Late collection has a procedure: two staff stay, the named contacts are called in order, the times are logged, and the child is never released to someone who is not on the form. A child who refuses to go with the named adult is a signal, not a mood: staff keep the child in the club and call the parent.

How many staff does a kids club need, and by age band?#

The hotel writes its own staff-to-child ratio, records why it chose it, and staffs to the youngest child in the room; confirm your own case with your adviser.

Group children by what a child can do unaided: use the toilet, put on a coat and shoes, cross a corridor, tell an adult that something is wrong. Age is a proxy; the band is the decision. The bands are the hotel's choice, published and enforced. An illustrative split, for example: 0 to 3 with a parent present, 4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 12. These numbers are not a legal rule and should not be presented as one.

The ratio drivers are concrete: the youngest child present, the number of exits from the room, toilet trips, the pool, a walk to the beach, and the number of languages being spoken at once. Apply the two-adult rule for toilets, changing and any one-to-one moment. It protects the child and it protects the staff member.

On qualifications, the Regulation on the Qualifications of Tourism Facilities requires certified or trained staff in a children's play unit (Article 15(1)). Beyond that, first aid and a child-development background are the qualifications that change how a day runs.

Name the mini club şefi: the person who owns the day's plan, the form file, the register and the handover. One name on the door, one person accountable for the paperwork. Write the ratio into the day's plan and stop admitting children when it is reached. A club that never says no does not have a ratio.

What are the rules on allergies, medicines and a sick child?#

Write the rule before the season, apply it to every child the same way, and put the decision in one named person's hands.

Allergies live in three places at once: the form, the register and the kitchen. A note that stays in a folder is not a control. Allow no food from outside, and keep a written list of what the club itself serves, with the allergens marked. Pointing at the buffet is not enough when the food is handed out by club staff. The kitchen-side routine is its own discipline: see food allergies in hotel restaurants and buffets food allergies in hotel restaurants and buffets: a guest safety routine.

Medicines: the club gives a medicine only when the parent has signed, handed it in labelled with the child's name, dose and time, and it is stored locked. Every dose is logged with the time and the initials of the person who gave it. Health data is a special category under KVKK Article 6, so it stays with the people who need it and out of shared staff chat groups.

A sick child needs four written things before the first case: an exclusion list (fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, an unexplained rash, head lice), the person who decides, the place where the child waits with an adult, and the call to the parent. Keep an incident and accident log, the same book every day: what happened, when, who was told, what was done. It is the only record that survives a change of staff. Where the hotel has a doctor or nurse, hand over to them; club staff do not diagnose and do not adjust a dose.

What does a kids club day's plan look like, and what happens on a rainy morning?#

Build the day from fixed anchors (opening, lunch, quiet hour, closing), fill the blocks between them, and count heads by name at every transition.

The anchors do not move; the blocks around them flex. A plan that starts from the activities rather than the anchors collapses at the first late lunch. Run two tracks for mixed ages with one shared anchor, such as lunch or the closing circle, so siblings meet and the team does not run two separate clubs.

Language is planned, not improvised: a picture timetable on the wall, name games that need no words, and one staff member per language at the busiest hour. The timetable does more work than the staff member's vocabulary.

The headcount happens at every transition, on the register, by name rather than by number. Counting to fourteen tells you nothing about which child is missing. For the rainy morning, prepare an indoor circuit with its own published capacity, a movement room, a craft table and a quiet corner. The lobby is not a plan. For a group booking, agree pre-booked slots, a waiting list and a published capacity with the front desk before the group arrives. The example below is an example: a shape to copy, not a standard. If the club sits inside a wider entertainment offer, plan it together with the hotel animation programs hotel animation programs: a weekly plan, the team and the guests it is for.

The rainy version keeps the same anchors, runs an indoor circuit with a capacity of its own, and moves the movement block indoors rather than dropping it.

What to do next#

Take the registration form and the collection rule to your next operations meeting and read them as if you were the parent at the desk at five past five. Then write the promise card, date your regulation check, and confirm your own case with a lawyer. The club is a procedure before it is a room, and the procedure is what parents are trusting when they walk away.