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In fact, you CAN just move to another country without any paperwork under European law, specifically European Freedom of Movement legislation. If you are from a non-visa country (as America is in respect of France), there is no requirement to have any kind of entry visa for stays of up to three months (see http://www.consulfrance-londres.org/article.php3?id_article=318); that's for the UK embassy in London but the information is applicable to citizens of other countries. Once such a person is in France, if they are married to, the parent of, the child of or in a relationship with a European citizen who is NOT French then they can apply for a European Residence Permit (Carte de Séjour Europeenne). Note that this is NOT the same as a normal Carte de Séjour and the only documents required are 1) proof of ID and 2) proof of relationship from the competent authority in their country of residence. In particular, they aren't allowed to ask for proof of income, address, and the 20 odd other additional documents that they generally ask for: the EU law is VERY clear about that. This permit gives you the right to live and work in France and the authorities are required to issue it within 90 days of your application. If you are from a visa-country and would ordinarily be eligible for the EU residence permit then they are required to provide a European Family Permit free on request. In practice, this means that, for France, they'd be required to issue a Shengen visa. You cannot apply for a an EU residence permit outside the relevant country (ie France in this case). What you apply for (if a visa-national) is an EU Family Permit. This is NOT required for non-visa nationals provided they are going down the EU residence permit route as EU law specifically allows you to change your status from visitor to resident (which is very common: Wendy certainly wasn't required to head back to Australia when I applied for the EU residence permit for her). If the EU residence can be applied for (and I don't think it can because your boyfriend is French, unless you have lived together outside France and can document that) then there is no requirement to leave, regardless of what the Prefecture may think (and most are very flakey on EU law). As the permit is under European freedom of movement law, what needs to happen in this instance to get the EU residence permit is for the boyfriend to move to another country (unless he has another European nationality), establish residence there and then move back to France. Silly, I know, but that's how it works. If the boyfriend has dual nationality, it's possible to apply under the other nationality as I did when we were living in the UK (same applies here as it's European law that's being used, not any national law). Having said all that, this permit is very, very rare. Wendy has the only one every issued in Northern Ireland and in total I understand that around 40 have been issued across the UK so I'd say the numbers are probably similar in France. Another possible alternative, if you have Irish roots is to get an Irish passport. If you have a parent or grandparent who was either born in Ireland pre-1922 or the Republic of Ireland after that or have had an Irish passport, then you are Irish and can therefore apply for an Irish passport. Note that if this applies, you don't need to apply for Irish citizenship first as you are Irish already (even if you didn't know it!). With an Irish passport you don't need to go through any of the formalities of getting a visa or anything and can live & work in France right away.   Arnold  

We apply our standard terms. However, when we have a booking from someone we know will need a visa, we highlight to them when they'd need to cancel to avoid us charging them or to receive a refund. Additionally, we try to get an e-mail off to them a few days before the various "no refund" dates come up. One thing we've also done for this and other "no-show" problems that we've been having lately is to significantly increase our deposit amount which is up from around 20% to 60% of the balance due where re require a deposit. To make it fair, we've also changed from the deposit being non-refundable (unless we relet the rooms) to it being refundable if it's cancelled one week or more in advance. The one week period is due to us running mainly as B&B; for gite bookings I'd say a month or more would be more realistic.   Arnold  

Most of the diabolic examples I've read of on this forum have been French run places. I would say "all" but there may well have been awful Brit places too that I've forgotten about. However, that isn't really fair on the French as they aren't quite competing on a level playing field. I think it's fair to say that most Brits starting up a CdH here are doing it primarily as a business and therefore it's not really fair to compare Mme Jaques running a room or two on her own vs Mr & Mrs Smith running 4 or 5 rooms together as a business. Naturally, this being an english language forum, the expectations of those staying in CdH on the back of some comment/reference from here are those of a broadly brit/irish background and are quite different from French staying in a CdH therefore, on the whole, people will be comparing what they get in a B&B in the UK/Ireland with what they get in a CdH here and it's not the same, particularly so in respect of a French owned CdH. As you know, a number of those newbie owners on this forum are starting off with the idea of having a brit-B&B that just happens to be in France and that clearly may well appear to brit-guests. As a consequence of that, you'll get a sort-of continental-plus-a-bit breakfast in a brit-run place, you might get a kettle in the room, possibly access to UK TV, etc. which you, in general, won't get in a French-owned place (which is not to say that none offer it because I know that at least one excellent French-owned place on my lists does go the extra mile to add stuff for foreigners). >It is only my custom if I think something is not right, after all, there are now many B&B ‘ers on here and to offer false info, really does none of us any good. I agree. Accurate info is best and I do accept that my original comment wasn't quite as accurate as it might have been; my impression was effectively based on the more recent additions to the site. I know that there are new-comers in the books. My impression though is that there are a lot more new-comers online and not in the books. If nothing else, the publication lead time dictates that those here less than a year probably aren't in the books. It's not just the house and the area that attracts people. It's the entire package and that does include things such as whether you offer child discounts. If there were two otherwise identical places in Normandy and you had two kids under 10, would you choose the one that charged your kids to eat or the one that let them eat free and thereby add maybe 40€ to the price of your stay each night or would you choose the place I mentioned? Whether that's seen as a brit-thing or not is academic as I'm quite sure that it would appeal just as much to the French. As noted here, the French do have a habit of travelling with a number of kids in tow (although I daresay that the "kids eat free" policy might not last too long if an overlly large percentage of those were to arrive week after week). We're not competing with run-down hovels by any means. One inn is pretty much the same as ours overall. The other is larger and has reasonable rooms but a none too good reputation locally but then that's irrelevant to the tourists as they don't really know what reputation a place has before they arrive. We have been doing well simply because the French are, on the whole, rubbish at marketing. Let's face it: it's totally crazy to have my site at number 3 in google for "chambre dhote" - there should be loads of English-language but French run sites way ahead of me.   Arnold  

I thought that "children eat free" was only in the hotel world but there's at least one B&B offering it: http://www.frenchconnections.co.uk/for_holiday_makers/accommodation/100589.cfm (we've no connection with them, just found them on a search). On the price front, when we took over, the previous owner hadn't raised prices in about 6 years either. Consequently, he had, of course, rather more in the way of occupancy than we did initially after we put the prices to a more realistic level but we're back up again (with prices that remain realistic). I think the lack of movement in prices is relatively common as Miki suggests; we've friends who took over a similar place to ours at around the same time and their previous owner hadn't shifted prices in (I think) 5+ years. I gather that they're also running with similar occupancy figures to his but with prices getting on for 50% higher. What does appear to happen when you raise prices is that you end up with a lot less French staying. Don't know if that applies everywhere but it appears to in this area (Pyrenees). Net effect, for us, is that the place went from getting on for 100% French under the previous owner to around 30-40% for us.   Arnold  

Missed your comments earlier Miki. As I say, the 10-20% figure is the impression I got from recent entries onto my sites and that I didn't know whether or not it's representative of the whole. I suspect that it may be representative of the newcomers over here (don't know for sure, of course) or at least more representative of them than the oldtimers over here. I accept that it may not be French custom to do such things, but that's no bad thing as the French have some pretty awful customs in the area of CdH from what I gather from comments on this board over the last couple of years. I made an honest comment which you decided to find fault with, as is your custom. The figures are NOT false. As you are well aware, the mix of people who are in B&B books is not the same as those who mainly sell online so it's quite possible that there are significant differences in things like child policies. Certainly a quick search for "chambre dhote children free" seems to throw up a considerable number of places (no, haven't checked them all by any means). Again, as I say I am going by recent (last 6 months or so) new entries so it's quite possible that they'll change their ideas a year or two from now. Yes, our place is up for sale. In fact it's up for sale for the very same reason which I gather you sold your last place ie that we have been a bit too successful and would like a slightly quieter life. Having four times the occupancy of both local auberges put together all last Summer looks very good on paper but makes for a very tiring life. No, that figure isn't made up and can be checked though I suspect probably not online.   Arnold  

Depends on the size of the booking, John. We've not really got any hard and fast rules about it but, for example, we knock 5% off the price for stays of a week or more and might discount the same amount if someone booked the same quantity of rooms over a shorter period eg 2 rooms for 3 nights. Well, actually "might" but usually don't but do at the level of around 3 rooms for 4 nights. We also give 5% off for returning guests that book direct on the basis that it's a whole lot cheaper for us to get them back than go out and find some brand new guests. In all these, we specify that the discounts only apply for direct bookings ie not via any agents or reservation systems. Not sure if it's due to this discounting but we had a bit of a run of 3+ day bookings lately which seemed almost like a holiday for us as compared to an equivalent run of overnighters. On the slightly different issue of discounting for more people in one room.... we've had problems with that. We don't specifically discount it but you can book our double room for 55€ (ie 27€ pp) and add a bed for 4€ (which we recognise isn't really enough) ie about 20€ pp and move up to the quad room at 70€ (ie 17€ pp). So you could look on that as a discount for having more people in a room. Where we've encountered problems is with a few people who've said "you charge 17€ pp, I'd like a single room" and similar. For kids we now say: "Children under 12 may stay in their parents' room without charge within the room maximum. In general our room maximum for ensuite double and triple rooms is 3 people plus one infant but it is only 2 people plus one infant in our non-ensuite rooms. We must be notified of children and infants as well as adults at the time of booking.". Soooo, if kids aren't staying in their parents' room, then they pay full price. I'm with you regarding a slight lack of comprehension as to the practicalities of having toddlers staying in a French chambre-d'hote. Different issue in a B&B back home but I just dread to think of toddlers around table d'hote.   Arnold  

[quote user="St Amour"] Not in my experience Arnold!!!  I remember the first child I let stay here for free (and the last incidentally) was a 10 month old because I had similar views to yours about baby food etc.  The little buggar ate a banana, a yoghurt, a pain chocolat and drank a mugful of milk (more than a lot of adults get through).  No way, most kids scoff down the pain chocolat, as well as a yoghurt and very often a croissant with lashings of jam (aside from that which ends up all round the table, on the floor and on their chair) so, sorry, but no half-price breakfasts here!  Dinner is 10 euros for kids having 2 courses and a soft drink or 15 euros for those having 3, whilst adults are 22.50 for 4 courses plus wine (the coke or orangina often costs as much as the wine!)  And I'm with Miki all the way on bedding and towels which need washing! [/quote] You've obviously had someone like our little guys staying. He started getting stuck into chicken tikka massala around 6 months. OK, so it turned him bright red but it went in, stayed in for a reasonable period and came out the other end. Having said that, most of the under FOUR that have stayed recently have STILL been on babyfood.

As I say, I've not done a study as you did. However, it is around 10-20% of the recent entries onto the sites as far as I can remember. Whether that's a representative sample, I don't know because I don't have the free time that you obviously have. "Can't see how that can happen, unless you still have spare rooms in the peak period, which many of us would not have." Some people do book a good deal in advance as you know. Many of those are the sensible ones with children who recognise that it might be quite difficult to get booked in if they get too close to the peak periods. For example, one large extended family group booked getting on for six months in advance and almost filled us up in one go. We've been turning away the less sensible with children in large numbers over the last month or so as I suspect are many others. If they happen to turn up with a booking quoting two adults and arrive with that plus five kids as happened in our first year, they won't get in this year but we were able to squeeze them in during our first year. Arnold  

Seems like a lot to me Miki though perhaps that's though it being mainly the new folk coming onto the site or whatever; I've not made a study of it or anything. There are certainly a number who are quite adamant about it though as they've severely told me off about even suggesting that it might be a good idea to set an upper limit on the number of kids. As I say, they see one of their primary markets as being families and presumably feel pushed to match the "kids go free" type offers that you see everywhere else. You are quite right in saying that it may not necessarily be economic too. Certainly once some people see that word "free", all common sense goes out the window. Whilst the family of two adults and five children booking our smallest double room was the extreme case, I've seen many instances of two adults plus two or three kids trying it too. That's why we ended up revising what "kids stay free" actually means in our own case to try and inject some sanity into the minds of potential guests but I expect that we'll still get some folk trying to squeeze a gallon into our pint pot during August. On the other side of the coin we've also had people changing voluntarily from one double room for 2 ad + 4 kids to two triples (which we charge at our double room rate 'cos the extra bed is for a child). This situation is about equally common as the "pile em in" situation although the chaos that the "pile em in" brigade causes makes them stick out a lot more.   Arnold  

You'd be surprised at how common "kids stay free" is the case in B&Bs here Miki. I reckon 10-20% of those on my listing sites offer it. I think, to some extent, it is a case of people having looked at what some hotel chains offer as you say but several places have been quite adamant that they are actively aiming for families and therefore felt that they should have such a policy in place. One place even gave off to me when I suggested that they'd be as well to put a limit on the number of kids staying in a room. That's not to say that the kids will eat free, of course. In practical terms, up to about 2 years old generally would be on baby food of some kind so therefore there's no additional cost for the food. My impression is that over 2 the norm is half price for breakfast for B&B places which, in practical terms, would mean that each child is "costing" about 1€ per night in terms of the breakfast. I've seen some places offering the evening meals at reduced prices for children (which seems fair enough if you're counting 2-12-ish as children and serving smaller portions).   Arnold  

Tea/coffee spilt is as nothing compared to red wine.   I think the problem we had with the brits staying and looking for the kettle is that they expected a brit-run place to have brit facilities. Net effect was that they worded their comments along the lines of "the hosts showed no concern for the welfare of their guests as they didn't even have a kettle in the room". Had we been a french-run place, their expectations would have been completely different I think.   Arnold  

Ah, but it doesn't work quite like that in practice. I've not made an indepth study of but just skimming around sites over the last few years I get the impression that those which operate "no kids" policies tend, on the whole, to be more expensive than those which are calling themselves "family friendly". Hard to say but my guess is that the greater number of customers that the family friendly places get tends to reduce the overall costs more than the notional extra costs incurred for the kids.   Arnold  

IBIS/Novotel do "children stay free" which means that children (up to 12) don't pay extra for accommodation. Their thinking is that they attract the couples anyway so being family friendly should pull in even more people. I assume that overall they make money on it. Can't remember who does it, but at least one hotel chain does "children eat free" which I think also means no additional charge for accommodation. I've seen several B&Bs on my listings that offer similar deals so I assume that at least the "children stay free" is quite common. The "children eat free" is much rarer. And, as John says, free means slightly higher charges for those without children to cover the additional costs. The big downside that we've found from our "children stay free" policy is that we quite commonly get people not counting the children when they book a room. So far, we've managed to accommodate all the people that arrived by juggling rooms around but the double room booking that failed to mention their 5 kids came pretty close to sleeping on the street that night. The other downside of a family friendly policy is that some people are none too keen on the noise of children playing in the garden so you need to keep families and those with no kids in separate parts of the building to try and keep everyone happy.   Arnold  

Maybe, but it's often far from clear in many cases what, if any, charge is applied to children and for that matter what age counts as a child. Not just in B&B either - we have a local museum which is free for children to age 7, half price to age 16 and full price after that which we only found out recently as they don't seem to state that anywhere. But anything involving meals is even more complicated. I've seen "children stay free", "children eat free" and "children free" amongst others. All of these can cause complications. For instance, we say something to the effect that we don't charge for children staying in their parents' room. However, we charge about half price for their breakfast from 2-12 which has caused some "debate" with guests who expected it free. Also, we've had problems with people booking a double room and arriving with a lot of children which they simply didn't mention when booking (we do ask for everyone staying to be listed). Now if they've booked a double and told us that they've two children, then we'll allocate them the little suite at the same price as the double but we've only one so we need to know well in advance. The most extreme case was one family who booked our smallest room for which we very clearly state that it cannot accommodate more than two people whether they are adults or children; they arrived with two adults and five children (from age 6/7 to about 14) then asked us to put extra beds in the room and were less than pleased to have to take two higher priced rooms to fit everyone in.   Arnold  

Depends on the agency. The minimum commission seems to be about 10% on the room price (maybe 8% once you add breakfast). Max is 35% usually. However, that is misleading as they are a wholesaler so they get about 20% and the agent that sells the room gets the other 15% (or perhaps it's the other way around).   Arnold  

I think 3 months is very limited. It can easily take 6 months or more before google properly recognises your domain name so pick a name, put a very simple page up and submit it to google asap. That way, when your proper site is ready, it will appear in searches quite quickly. It's also worthwhile getting your site listed everywhere else as soon as you can (see coming PM). I would go with .com personally as everyone just assumes that so if someone is guessing they'll normally start with that. Having said that, I'm about to start experimenting with www.chambres-dhotes.co.uk to see if it makes much of a difference in hits. Also, host your site in the UK or at least Europe if at all possible (not all UK hosts will accept a non-UK address). The location of the hosting is used by google etc. to rank your page so if your main customer base is from the UK, host it there if you can. This is more expensive than hosting in America for comparable facilities (about 2 or 3 times more usually) but the business gained will more than make up for that. Much as it may seem like a good idea to pay someone to do your site, I personally think you'd be better doing it yourself. That way you'll be able to add little changes without running up a bill and keep the site fresh. Buying a cheapo site isn't generally worth doing - some of the £99 sites I've seen lack items required to get your site indexed by the search engines.   Arnold  

It's best never to assume what the prices are for kids as there's such a variation. I've seen anything from free to full adult price myself.   Arnold  

What about the problem of reconciling the British loving a kettle in the room and the French hating it so much that they pile that plus everything else "British" outside? Came across that 18 months ago so we had to take the kettles out of the rooms but now have had a complaint against us on a website by a Brit that we don't have kettles in the rooms. You can't win [8-)]   Arnold  

We've been getting a run of these ourselves. We went through about five or six bookings from South Africans before the first one arrived. In hindsight, I think that the others were genuine as I had the chance to have quite a conversation with the guy that did make it (and others have subsequently) and it seems that it's a major, major effort to get a Schengen visa if you're South African. At the moment, we seem to be going through a similar process with the Chinese and have had around 4 or 5 cancelled bookings before the first Chinese guests arrived. Again, it appears to be a visa problem. All the above were living in the UK and wanted to come to France on holiday. We've already had some Indians stay so keep your fingers crossed. Ours had to be sponsored by their employer to get the visa.   Arnold  

Poor Pierre has probably been serving time for money laundering every since :)   One thing that might be worth trying is to get a UK petrol station card (ie BP, Esso, Shell, etc.). I'm told by various clients coming from Holland and Belgium that these work in French automated stations (obviously BP only working in French BP stations etc.). Snag is that the mix of stations is quite different in France than it is in the UK but I'm sure that you can get a map of where their stations are in France.   Arnold  

Must vary depending on the area; 10pm is the cut-off around here. Actually one other thing that varies is whether or not they bother to put a sign at the tollbooth on the way onto the motorway saying what cards they accept. They don't put such a sign in this area (Pyrenees-Orientale) and therefore it's quite possible to run up quite a bill before you find out that they don't accept your card. Biggest problem locally is that the Spanish motorways accept American Express, Visa Electron and (I think) Maestro but the French ones don't. Always wondered what happened when someone turned up at the tollbooth with only one of those cards and no cash: seems that you get a police escort back to the previous service station to withdraw cash as I saw that happen the other day.   Arnold  

If you are getting low on petrol after closing hours (ie between about 7pm and 8am or anytime on Sunday), the only dependable way to get it if you don't have a French card, is to go onto a motorway and use one of the service stations. The motorway service areas are always manned (usually 24 hours, 7 days) and therefore take foreign cards. One nuisance of these places is that they generally require you to prepay for the fuel after about 10pm. Note that they generally only take Mastercard, Visa and the debits card equivalents ie Maestro/Switch and Visa Electron; they rarely take American Express or Diners Club. This doesn't apply to "service areas" signposted from normal roads. However, if you're quite a way from a motorway, you MIGHT  find a manned station (max hours around 8am to 10pm) IN a village. I stress "in" because those just off a main road will almost certainly be automated after 7pm, what you're looking for is a small local station and they're usually right inside the village. I'll also stress that this isn't a dependable option: as an indication of how undependable this is, there is only one such station on the D117 between Perpignan and Foix, a distance of around 200 miles.   Arnold  

I wonder about the effectiveness of the photocards over time. As you say, people get older but there doesn't seem to be a mechanism in place to ask you for a new photo before they renew your card. I gather that they're very effective in reducing fraud though. When they were (briefly) introduced in the UK by a couple of banks, the fraud on those cards dropped 90%.   Arnold  

The only French debit cards that won't work in the autoroutes are Maestro and Visa Electron ones; foreign versions of those aren't accepted in tollbooths (or some car parks) either. It's basically down to the way that these cards are processed - essentially you can't do a "customer not present" transaction on them and as you'll know from the speed of processing at tollbooths, clearly the transaction isn't processed while you're there. Rural France will have to roll out acceptance whether they want to or not as all new French cards are EMV standard and therefore the French will gradually find that they can't use their own petrol stations if the update of the software isn't rolled out. One of our guests said that they could already use the automated stations with a UK card in the Loire. It isn't just the British cards either as the EMV (ie chip & pin) cards are being rolled out over most of Europe, even including France! The problem at the moment is that the banks are gradually updating the software over a period of a year or two. Most shops locally used chip & pin last year but LIDL only took out pin yesterday for the first time. It's also far from obvious to the shop assistants what way they need to process the cards. At least I can look at a card, recognise it as a British one and if the start date is 2004 or later then I know it's probably a chip & pin card and insert it in out TPE rather than swiping it. On the other hand there are some European countries which have chips on their cards but aren't chip & pin (yet).   Arnold      

It is. The easiest option is www.britline.com which is an English speaking phone/internet banking branch of Credit Agricole. However, you need to fork out about 40€ per year for the convenience of their cheapest card which will work everywhere (ie a Mastercard; I understand that even French Visa Electron & Maestro cards won't work in the petrol stations). But, that shouldn't be necessary as the petrol stations are gradually being upgraded to accept international cards. We had some guests staying who had no problems in the Loire for instance. In the meantime, you can get petrol on the motorways as they're open on Sundays and in some small petrol stations attached to the likes of bars.   Arnold