A Big Bear Lake hotel owner says San Bernardino County's health department is failing to protect the health of mountain travelers while making it difficult for hotels to compete with private home rentals.

Jim McLean, owner of Apples Bed and Breakfast in Big Bear Lake, says the county doesn't do anything to ensure hot tubs at vacation rentals - private homes that are rented to travelers - are safe and sanitary but requires inspections and expensive equipment for hot tubs at hotels. He's suing the county, saying it needs to enforce state health codes equally at vacation rentals just as it does at hotels.

"All I've ever asked for is to be treated equally and fairly," said McLean, who has filed several lawsuits against the county and the city of Big Bear Lake over the years. "No one has been able to get the two types of lodging on the same playing field."

McLean's lawsuit is the latest sign of long-standing bad blood between hotel owners and the vacation rental industry. For years, perhaps decades, hotel owners in and around Big Bear Lake have complained that they face unfair competition from the huge number of lightly regulated private homes that are rented to mountain travelers.

"It's been going on a fair amount of time," said Oak Knoll Lodge owner Chuck Lawrence, who has lived in the Big Bear area since two weeks after his birth in 1937. "If I'm going to be inspected as a commercial lodge, then these private home rentals that are renting

to the general public just like I am, they've got to come under the same regulations."

The city of Big Bear Lake is home to nearly 1,000 private homes that can be rented to travelers. Like hotels, these private homes collect a transient occupancy tax - also called a hotel bed tax - but they don't have the same requirements as a hotels, motels or inns.

Hotels, for instance, have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to accommodate people with disabilities, including people in wheelchairs.

"I was required to put in a handicap guest room," said Stan Miller, owner of Knickerbocker Mansion Country Inn in Big Bear Lake. The main floor of the inn is used as a lobby and dining area, so an elevator to the second floor would have been problematic. That room had to go into another building, and Miller had to build a ramp between the wheelchair-accessible room and the main inn.

"The ramp between the buildings cost $38,000," he said.

But vacation rentals don't have to comply with ADA. Michael Perry, a former Big Bear Lake city manager who now represents vacation rental agencies and owners, said that's because vacation rentals are still private residences, not businesses.

"These homeowners sleep in the same beds, cook in the same kitchens, and look at the same TVs" as paying guests, Perry said. "These are clearly being used in a residential sense more than in a commercial lodging sense."

Asked how often owners of vacation rental homes occupy them and how often they are rented out, Perry said he did not have statistics. Asked if he could put a Sun reporter in touch with owners of vacation rental properties, Perry said he could not.

The difference between a commercial property, such as a hotel, and a private home that is rented to guests is at the heart of McLean's lawsuit.

State law requires inspections for all public pools and hot tubs. McLean's attorney, T. Matthew Phillips, argues that because vacation rental homes are available to be rented by the public, the hot tubs at vacation rental homes are public, just as hot tubs at hotels are public.

According to state code of regulations, the only pools exempt from rules on public pools are those "maintained by an individual for the use of family and friends." Phillips said that should make hot tubs at vacation rentals, which are used by customers as well as friends and family, public.

But in its response to McLean's suit, the county said vacation rental hot tubs are not public, even though they are used by rental customers.

The difference, County Counsel Ruth E. Stringer wrote in the county's response, is that hot tubs at hotels are open to multiple groups of people at once, while hot tubs at a vacation rental are open to only one group at a time.

"In the case of a single-family resident, whether it is utilized as a vacation rental ... or for the use of the owner as a residence, it is only available to one family or one group of related individuals at a time," according to the county response.

County spokesman David Wert said the health department believes hot tubs at vacation rentals present a lower public health risk because of that difference.

"The presumption is that, at any one time, at a private home, the people using the spa are either family members or they all know each other," Wert said. "At a spa facility that will serve many people at once who don't know each other, it's different."

But Phillips said waterborne illnesses can just as easily be spread among families or friends - or between different groups who use a hot tub in succession - as between strangers.

"It's only one family using it, but it's a different family every weekend," Phillips said.

Phil Mosley, Big Bear Lake's director of community services, said the city inspects vacation rental properties when they register with the city. He said owners and vacation rental management agencies are given information about proper pool and spa cleaning and sanitation, although the city does not require them to follow any set procedures.

"They need to be cleaning them regularly after each guest use," he said. "We've been very clear to them about their liability. Should someone contract an illness, they could have potential legal exposure."

Perry said vacation rental operators drain and clean hot tubs between uses, but it's not required that they do so. Phillips said that means there's no way for travelers to know whether the hot tub at a vacation rental has been properly cleaned.

"That's gross," he said.