purelyfrance

Rubber Slippers in Italy

The most pleasurable thing about holiday accommodation are the ‘guests’.  Many come and go and your memory of them fades over time.(particularly with a memory like mine)   Others arrive as strangers and leave as friends.  After an idle hour or so over a glass (or two) of wine you find you share common values and views of the world.  In those two hours you are unable to ‘fix’ all the problems in the world but it is fun discussing them. A few guests even return the following year. And then there is a small number who you seem to be so in ’sync’ with, that you find yourselves maintaining an ongoing contact from afar.

One such couple who fall in to this latter category for us are Dario and Rowena Castelli. They live in Dario’s home country of Italy, (you wouldn’t guess would you) just north east of Milan near the southern tip of Lake Como. (I could kill them for that) You know the standard image of Italian men right; dark, tall, suave, macho, ice cool looks, boss of the family, etc etc.  Well Dario by comparison is a teddy bear; laid back, gentle, smile on his face, easy paced, considerate and an all round good guy.

As for Rowena, well,  she talks like an Italian, and throws her hands around like an Italian but she hardly looks Italian at all. The fact that she is Hawaiian may have something to do with all that. What is she doing in Italy married to Dario?  That’s Rowena’s story to tell. But Rowena could be the poster girl for Hawaiian tourism. As well as being cute looking, she has that smiley, enthusiastic, eternally optimistic attitude that seems to be imbedded within many ‘island’ people. As Dario will attest, Rowena is fun to be around.

Rowena has been clever enough to create her own stimulating blog.  http://www.rubbahslippahsinitaly.blogspot.com/  If you are keen on Italian food/cooking you share a passion with Rowena and on her Blog you will find all sorts of enticing recipes and dishes.  They are accompanied with great photo illustrations too. And in between recipes there are many interesting stories of life in Italy, sprinkled of course with much Hawaiian humour. If you need to give your day a lift or to lighten it for 5 minutes, you may find a visit to Rowena’s Blog will do just that.

A Bientot,

Bruce.

 Setting prices - difficult but tres important! (Part 1)

One of the most perplexing issues when you first create holiday accommodation, is how much do you charge?  From our experience and observation we feel that around 75% of privately owned properties could attract more income. In essence many people are under pricing their accommodation!!  Yes, we have also seen some who are a bit steep with their prices but they are very much the minority.

So on what do you base your prices?  We suspect most people do what we did and check out a few like-for-like properties in the surrounding area. Then based on what you have seen you set your prices, possibly slightly lower because you are the ‘new kid on the block’ and yes you may be about to activate a website, and advertise in an internet directory,but who knows how much business that is going to bring in? That was certainly our scenario. In retrospect, after our first season we figured our prices were about 100 francs per night too low.  That could have earned us another 20% of income.

So how does one avoid that?  We think one of the first things to decide is what your product is going to consist of, what sort of market will it appeal to, and then price it accordingly. That was something we did not devote enough thought to. We decided we wanted a B n B of ‘quality,’ good quality furnishings, beds and linen, towels, an extensive breakfast, rooms serviced every day with fresh bathroom linen supplied daily. We installed extras, like hair dryers, supplied make up removal pads and ear buds.

 We created a summer kitchen attached to our rooftop terrasse where complimentary tea/coffee was available around the clock. We ensured our computer was available without charge for internet access and made bicycles available also without charge. But then what did we do, we charged ‘middle of the road’ rates instead of placing a value on all those extras for our guests. So, it is important to ensure you match your rates to the standard of accommodation, and the services and facilities you are going to provide.

Another conundrum is that a price in one market can be very reasonable, e.g. the UK, but may seem costly in another market where the currency is not as strong against the Euro.  That influenced us a bit originally, as we were expecting, and we did get a good number of guests from Australia and New Zealand where the national currencies are not overly strong. But we can’t see any way around that, it is a consequence of the ‘World’ being able to access your product (which is great!) and we feel that it is more important to ensure you are offering value for money.

 Seasonal Rates

We often see owners ‘depriving’ themselves of income by applying too many seasonal rates. It is common to have the high season listed as July/August, with a lower rate for the months either side. We have consistently experienced strong demand (both B n B and self-catering) for June and September so we leave the rate at the same level.  Demand for these months come from Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. These people are ’savvy’ travellers who know that in general Europe is too hot and too congested in July/August, so plan their travel accordingly. British visitors too will travel in those months for the same reasons, particularly those who are not tied to school holidays.

We have been suprised to see the growing trend in Americans seeking self-catering accommodation, they make up 22% of our bookings so far this season.

We leave the same rate in place even for April and May. Yes, the demand may not be quite as strong but by accepting ‘broken’ weeks in our apartments we still manage to  have good utilisation. These months are helped by Easter, (sometimes) the UK bank holiday weekends and holidays in Switzerland.  In addition, here in Burgundy, the wine industry also contributes to demand outside of the July/August months.

When setting your rates for a new season it pays to reconsider your seasons based on what happened the prevous year but also by looking ahead. For example for 2007, it would be reasonable to expect increased demand in October due to this years Rugby World Cup.

 Children.

Another area where ‘soft’ pricing can occur is with children. But you are quite entitled to charge extra for children as you do for extra adults. Most airlines charge 75% of the adult fare for children, train services at least 50%. Children use a bed and create laundry, use water and electricity. By their very nature they can sometimes cause additional cleaning and/or minor maintenance.

We enjoy having children on our property on a reasonably regular basis but I must admit our own pricing approach for children is a bit of a moving feast. We deliberately don’t state it on our website so it can remain flexible. We tend to weigh up how many children there are, what age they are, length of stay, time of year and then determine the cost accordingly. We rarely charge for babies, even though we do host many of them.

As a general observation, it is very easy to become too price sensitive.  Remember that accommodation is only one segment of cost for your guests. They will have airfares or ferry crossings, often other accommodation, petrol and various other costs. Certainly for those guests who arrive from ‘long haul’ destinations their accommodation costs are a much lower portion of their overall costs, so price is often not the motivator behind their decision making.

This was brought into stark reality late last year when a client was telling me he paid 285 euros for a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet chardonnay and it was of such good quality he bought three! One bottle was more than he paid us for his 4 night stay!!

One situation where we do discount our rates is for any two week booking.  We provide a 10% discount off the second week.  We don’t get many of them and of course you want to ‘nail’ the booking. In many cases it is probably not neccessary but of course it does create a positive impact with the guests.

At whatever level you set your rates, we repeat, ensure you are providing ‘value for money’. More than anything else, ’value for money’ will generate referrals and repeat business.

Due to the length of this Post I have decided to break it into two, Part 2 will follow in the next few days.

A Bientot,

Bruce.

The match up: Bed and Breakfast versus Self-Catering accommodation

If you have the choice between these two types of accommodation you are in a good position. If you are a tiger for punishment you can of course offer both!! This Post explores the differences between operting a B n B and Self-catering accommodation whether that be a Cottage, Apartments or Gites. We will look at the characteristics of each as well as their pros and cons. Each of them have both!

We cut our teeth on a small B n B in Provence with 2 double bedrooms and an attic style single room. We then graduated to a 5 bedroom B n B here in Burgundy, eventually added a self-catering Apartment to our portfolio. Last year we switched to an all self-catering operation offering two apartments and a Cottage, 5 bedrooms in all.

Why did we change?  The key reasons revolved around time, demand and simplicity. We suspect like many starry-eyed B n B owners, our loose plan was, step 1, get the B n B created and operating. (12 months hard work skipped over in those few words!) Step 2, look around for some other income related activity to occupy ourselves in our ’spare’ time.  The slight miscalculation we made was how much, or rather how little time we would have available.

A relatively ‘normal’ B n B day for us went something like this. Between 0600 and 0630, Elle, our Australian born, pure breed maine coon cat would let us know it was time to get up and feed her. (while a totally appropriate name for a cat living in France, Elle was named after that other Australian of the same name - mainly as I admire Elle Mac’s business acumen) First task was to prepare for le petit dejeuner. Breakfast itself would occupy us until 1030.  Understandably, guests are always in holiday mode so are quite happy to sit around and chat. It was at least 1100 before breakfast was cleared away, dishes washed and dried and the table reset.

Then the cleaning session began, which we did every day. Towels to be laundered, beds to be remade, bathrooms to be cleaned, hoovering, dusting et al. You can count on 45 mins per bedroom, plus the common areas. So together with a hurried bite to eat for lunch, the clock rolled around to 1400 before we knew it. Then there is always one errand or another to run. Shopping for provisions, posting mail, paying bills, sourcing material from the Tourism office, or just having your haircut!

We specified to new guests an arrival time of 1500. So from that time on, at least one of us needed to be on ‘duty’.  We rarely knew the arrival time which could be between 1500 and 2100. That excludes the occasional guests who would telephone to say they were lost!  Around 1700 our existing guests would arrive home so you would spend time talking with them about their adventures for that day. Then there may have been restaurant bookings to make. So when you throw in emails to be answered, an occasional aperitif with the guests, cooking our own evening meal and French language lessons, you can see the amount of ’spare’ time amounts to precious little!

Contrast that with self-catering accommodation. Saturday is usually ‘change over’ day. So it is full on with departing guests, and preparing the Gites for your new arrivals. But bathroom and bedroom linen are only changed weekly, and no further cleaning is required until the next Saturday comes around. So you can see immediately, self-catering is definitely not as time absorbing as a B n B operation. This once weekly servicing also has a big impact, i.e. reduction, on your costs. So while with self-catering your income is likely to be less, your costs will be substantially lower and therefore produce a better bottom line.

Another interesting difference is the nationality make-up of your guests. For our B n B, guests were roughly split 25% British, 25% American/Canadian, 25% Australia/New Zealand and 25% rest of Europe and Asia. For our self-catering accommodation, 50%  come from the UK, 30% from Australia/New Zealand, 10% rest of Europe and 10% from North America.  We were surprised to learn how much market demand exists for self-catering, particularly as Burgundy is not a ’sun and sand’ type of destination. The B n B season starts earlier, but for June through September we have little trouble filling our apartments. To help attract bookings for the earlier months, March, April, and May we do accept stays of less than one week.

We find generally, self-catering guests tend to be more experienced holiday makers. This particularly applies to our British guests, many of whom have some French language skills. Consequently they require a much lower level of assistance and therefore occupy less of your time.

But the biggest driver to determine whether B n B or Gites are ‘right’ for you is your own motivation. If you thirst for people interaction; if you thrive in social situations with interesting people from a range of countries; if it is your sole business activity; if you want to provide table d’hotes then a B n B is likely to be the right recipe for you.  But…….we suggest you ensure your personal living accommodation is separate and private from your guest accommodation.

If on the other hand, your time is at a premium, you have other commercial activities, you are seeking to supplement your income and/or make more productive use of your assets then you may well find the self-catering scenario is more suited to you.

In our next Post in our B n B & Gites for fun and profit series we will be discussing the not so easy task of setting your tariffs. (rates)

A Bientot,

Bruce.

Bonjour à Tous,

 In France there are several thousand ‘etrangers’ (foreigners) who own and operate holiday accommodation, usually either Bed and Breakfast or Gite/Apartment/Cottage  accommodation on a self-catering basis. Owners cover a diverse range of nationalities. We personally know of English owners, Scottish, American, Australian, French, German, New Zealand, Canadian, Egyptian and Belgian. No doubt there are many, many others.

Accommodation owners spring from a variety of backgrounds. The most common thread amongst us being our love of France and the French, and our desire to change our traditional lifestyle. (more on that latter misconception later!!)  Offering holiday accommodation is also one of the few income earning activities that can be achieved without the need to be fluent in French.

We always take a very open attitude and provide detailed information willingly to anyone who has quizzed us on the ‘ins and outs’ of operating holiday accommodation. Now that we are entering our 5th season of offering both B n B and self-catering accommodation we feel we have a number of helpful experiences to share. We tell ourselves we have operated successfully but in reality we dont really know. We have tried a lot of different methods; some have worked well, while others have been a lot of work for little return either economically or in relation to the needs of our guests.

It occurs to us that there could be much benefit in establishing a forum where existing and potential property owners can exchange views, ideas and observations. Additionally as these Posts will be read by guests and potential guests it can also act as productive interaction between owners and clients. We will certainly be sharing what we have learnt in some detail. We wont claim it is the ‘best’ way, but more describing what has worked well for us and perhaps just as usefully, what has been a waste of time, effort and money. So we will give this a crack and see how it goes!

In our next Post in this category we will discuss the pros and cons of Bed and Breakfast accommodation versus self-catering holiday accommodation.

A Bientot,

Bruce.