Whilst I suspect you are right, there's a chain as to whose problem it is.Gareth Harley-Yeo wrote: The halal food issue I can understand - if the ECF failed to meet their obligations of provision for any special dietary requirements then this needs to be looked at for future events.
If you play in a tournament whether in the UK or abroad, you can find a number of ways of booking it.
The most obvious model is that you enter the tournament and then separately arrange a hotel or equivalent. If the hotel fails to provide special requests promised at booking, you look directly to the hotel for redress.
Sometimes, e2e4 being a possible UK example, you book a package of both the hotel and tournament entry with the tournament organiser. Is the responsibility to meet special requests that of the organiser or the hotel?
Moving on to International events and International Junior events, it's quite normal for the organiser to insist that entry is only possible through the "official package". The complicating feature is that they will also only accept entries from national federations, not directly. So this is where the ECF gets involved, at a couple of stages removed from the hotel.