Paolo

Thanks Miki - where would this forum be without you? Paolo

I want to add my support for the presenter of Grand Designs. I love this guy! One week he reveals he speaks fluent Italian, the next he is speaking fluent French, and one you missed - for some reason he was skiing at the beginning of one programme recently and guess what, he skis like a god. This guy is so posh he could be Royal. But he's a builder called Kevin. Paolo

This is probably the wrong place to post this but I couldn't find a more obvious place. Can anyone tell me what the situation is with opening hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - for shops and restaurants. Is everything shut or is it like England? I am specifically interested in rural dept. 84, but I guess it's the same everywhere. Sorry this is a boring post! Paolo

"Funny world isn't it, it used to be communism that was said to be forced on the world now..." Good point - it expresses the unease a lot of people feel about what Bush is up to. Same rhetoric, same keywords, same polarising effect on the world as during the cold war. I suppose if you dip in to the history books it's nothing new. Paolo

"not everyone who is promised it by the experts can possibly get on the first page of Google" This idea of ranking near the top of Google is a commonly expressed one but it doesn't really mean anything on its own. Get on the first page for what? If you typed the sentence I am writing now into Google in a few weeks time, when it has had time to index this page, then this page would be number one on Google for that search. That is because nowhere else on the internet will that exact sentence appear, so this page will be returned as the best match. However, if you typed "first page of Google" in, this page would not be in the first thousand results. So yes you can be on the first page of Google, but you need to do it for a search term that someone might use. And the more often it is used, the better. What I know about SEO is what I have read about it on the internet. I have done my version of optimisation on my site for my two properties, but so far that has not extended even to a linking campaign (which is pretty important). But if you type in my village's name on its own, 'Menerbes', I am 4, 5 and 6 on Google (today). Interestingly, if you type in 'Menerbes holiday rentals' I drop down to the 20s. That's because all the advertising sites are optimised for the phrase 'holiday rentals', and they push me down. Anyone who says they can get you guaranteed page one on Google is talking rubbish. It depends for what phrase. It's like saying I have the number one shoes in the country! It may be true for my feet, and even some others, but that's about it. And the 'guaranteed' part is doubly rubbish. Google and the others change their algorithms constantly, and your ranking can fluctuate wildly. The way to minimise that is to fill your site with great content. Paolo

As far as I can make out Britain entered WWI because Germany invaded Belgium on the way to France. Britain had a mutual agreement with Belgium that they would come to each other's help if attacked by another country (seems to have been a better deal for Belgium than GB). The whole of WW1, which started out as a minor Balkan affair, seems to have been set off by a tangle of such alliances across Europe. Looking back on it now it seems rather ludicrous that it was the rigid compliance with these agreements (for whatever ulterior motives) that split Europe into two sides and persuaded them that they were at war with each other. Could it happen today? Are treaties and alliances worth the paper they are written on? More worryingly, do you think conscription could happen today? For a war which is as contentious as Iraq, say? I really can't see it. People these days do not feel bound to do their duty for God and country - we are all consumers now, with consumers' rights. We like to cheer on anything that moves in a UK strip at the Olympics, not sure if we'd be too happy to sacrifice our lives for the flag though. Or is it just me? Paolo

Deby, Are you really a Duchess? Your home befits one. Do you rub your eyes in the morning when you see where you live? Paolo

"Does anybody know how many British soldiers from WW1 are still alive?" This summer it was reported that there were 23 British survivors who had seen active duty, ranging in age from 103 to 108. My view is that you cannot equate WWI with Iraq. Soldiers today may have been told to go to Iraq whether they agree with it or not (although they can refuse to go and not be shot for treason). But they are professional soldiers who joined the army out of choice, and going to war is part of the job description. In WWI the men of Britain (and elsewhere) were told: right, everyone in this age group must now report for duty, we are going to send you to France where you will be invited to walk very slowly across open land into continuous machine gun fire, and if you don’t like it you will be shot by us. As to why we should remember WWI and not Agincourt, well I suppose 1914 is where we draw the line as the start of the modern era, where the values, concerns, ideals and ideas of people are recognisably the same as our own. There is a great film ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ which traces the life of an army officer. At the beginning it is the time of the Boer War, and it’s all red uniforms, charging about on horses with swords drawn. At the end it is the blackout of WWII. Colonel Blimp is as lost in this new world as we would be any time before the early part of the 20th century. Now that’s what I call a contentious point! Paolo

"How far do we go back with these things, for me it is time that 11.11.1918 slipped into history." I find it moving that my countrymen made the pledge many years ago: "We shall never forget them". I consider it my duty and that of all peace-loving people to uphold that pledge through the generations. The First World War should never be forgotten, not just because of the meaningless slaughter of a generation, or because it was a 'just war', but because for the most part they did not ask to go, they were bl**dy well told to go. It saddens me that there isn't a proper day of remembrance on the 11th, when the shops are shut for at least half a day and the massed armies of consumers are forced to think about something other than shopping for more clothes they could probably do without. Paolo

"so how does one optimise ones site?" I didn't want to go wildly off-topic so I have posted a reply to this in a new topic here: http://www.livingfrance.com/instantforum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=16&MessageID=47083   Paolo

This is a follow-up to the 'Buying habits of Europeans' thread because I didn't want to go off-topic there.   As someone who didn’t know what SEO (search engine optimisation) meant until a year or so ago, but has been finding out about it since then, I thought it might be helpful to tell you what I’ve found out, as there are a couple of misperceptions in the above thread.   SEO may sound strange and exotic but really it is just logical, anyone can do it, but like anything, some will do it better than others. So I wouldn’t advise spending big money on it.   First of all, I am really talking about Google here because that is the search engine that is used for the majority of searches.   You cannot pay to rank higher on Google. You do pay for Google’s pay-per-click programme, AdWords, but these are the little boxes that appear to the right of a results page, not the results themselves.   Google is free. How high you rank is decided by two main factors:   -         relevance of a page’s content to the search phrase typed in by a user. -         quality of links from other sites to yours (quality meaning relevance and popularity of those sites).   Search engine optimisation is simply the manipulation of these two factors to make you rank higher.   You can do it all yourself, or you can pay someone to do it. I would do it yourself, as a nice winter project.   To optimise your site’s content, you need to work out which are the most likely phrases someone would type into a search engine when looking for a place like yours. Then you need to forget about the most popular ones like ‘gites in Normandy’ because you have no chance of competing against the hundreds of advertising sites optimised for this phrase. You should look for more ‘niche’ phrases, which include the name of your town or village. There will be fewer people searching with these, but they will be more pre-disposed to booking your house.   Then you take two or three phrases per page of your site and weave them into the text, but not so much that it reads funny. Now your site will rank higher for a search using one of those phrases.   For the linking aspect, I have written about this in my last newsletter for rental owners which you can see here (it’s free): http://www.laymyhat.com/newsletters/newsletter7.htm   In the next one I will be writing about getting links from directories (very important).   If you are wondering why links are important, it is because a link to your site represents a vote of approval for it. The more links you have the more useful your site must be. That was in the innocent days, before link farms and exchanges. So now links need to be from a related site, i.e. travel, holiday rentals, France, to be really effective.   It used to be that a site’s relevance was judged by things like the keywords tag in the html code. Long gone now because so open to abuse. In fact the metatags are mostly dead at the moment, only the Title and Description count for anything on most search engines.   Here are some good SEO tutorials for beginners that I found useful (and am not associated with):

I would do likewise - look into the market of people who are either looking for a place and need to rent for a while, or those that have just bought and need somewhere to live while building work goes on. I recently looked long and hard on the internet for a house available for a one-year rent in the south. I didn't find anything I would want to subject my family to. There are probably Brits doing the same for a house in your area. If you did find a nice responsible family they could keep your garden alive too. Then again, your electrical problem, and the possibility of children chopping themselves in half in your workshop, might put me off altogether. Paolo

I read an interesting theory about the dip in tourism this year: It's because of the sensational summer in the UK in 2003. More people decided they didn't need to go to France for good weather in 2004. By the time they realised this summer was back to normal, it was too late. Does this ring true? If so, it suggests this year's decline is a blip and not a trend. Paolo

Diana, What would ring alarm bells for me is the mention of Hungary. There was someone from Hungary calling round a list of rental properties on the net asking you to advertise on his site. Is this new call unrelated? If your house no longer features on the internet, he is almost certainly calling a list compiled when it was. That's unless he printed off your details when you had a site (unlikely) or he used the Wayback Machine internet archive (preposterous). Dick, It's lucky for us that scammers haven't learnt spelling, grammar and lower case yet. When they do, they will be very much more successful. If my mother received that email (and she banked with Barclays) would she have deleted it? Not sure... Paolo

Pamela, If you are starting with a completely blank sheet of paper, here is my best bit of advice: target couples, not families. Couples will be able to come to you all through the year, they don't have school holidays to worry about, quite the opposite, they look to travel when the crowds are gone. For this market you need one-bed or two-bed properties. Two-bed is good because many couples travel in pairs, or want their son and daughter-in-law, etc. to join them. Two-bed also allows you to get smaller families. But one-bed is also in demand. You will need to be somewhere on the main tourist trail though, with good transport links to your target markets. For couples, airports are important. Your online marketing will reach all anglophones, and non-UK people will typically fly into Paris and take a flight/train/car hire from there. You would not want the last leg of the journey (usually car hire) to be more than an hour. It has to be on the tourist trail if you want year-round rentals because you have to be able to express the benefit in three or four words (as you know), e.g.: 'Romantic Paris loft', 'Wake up to the Mediterranean', ‘Dordogne for two’. If you go somewhere which is not known because you want to get more for your euros, as Miki said, it doesn't matter how wonderful it is, you will not be able to attract so many people because while you are explaining how charming and quiet it is, they will have moved on to the next site. Couples, especially North Americans, expect a higher level of amenities and plumbing than family groups, and you won’t want cheap-looking furniture, so there would be a greater up-front investment. However, if you are going to buy something in need of renovation, smaller ‘units’ are quicker and easier to get ready and earning income. It is also best to be in or very near a village with basic shops like a bakery and a grocery, and at least one restaurant. With savvy marketing, you can tap in to the year-round wanderings of American, Canadian, Aus and NZ couples, as well as the British. Paolo

Valiantlad, Your numbers concern me: 550,000 euros for a gite complex is not a big number, but 8 mouths to feed, etc. off the resulting income is. I would take a good look at the rest of these forums, dedicated to the reality of actually living in France. Have a look at the Education forum for likely effects on your children - the older ones may not share your dreams! The little 'uns won't really know what's going on. I don't want to sound negative but these are my concerns as someone whose thoughts are heading the same way as yours for next year. I would not be buying a gite complex, but I would be displacing children (only two, and very young). When I see a programme about a family moving to France because they don't see enough of each other in the UK, they never seem to have a proper plan for their income, and are basically unemployable because they don't speak a word of French. Don't be like them! Paolo

Quote: “Those of you that are offering a quality service, keep at it, spell out exactly what you are offering, its the dissimulators that will go by the wayside.”   I think this is what it all boils down to. There may be an over-supply of gites in many areas but there is also a lot of dross, and you can still stand out from the rest by doing things right.   This goes back to a question at the beginning of this thread asked by Pamela who is relocating to France next year and wants to start a gite business:   “as existing gite owners / business people, what would your one piece of advice be to 'new comers' like myself hoping to enter this market.” Assuming you have moved and bought a place, my one piece of advice would be: differentiate. By this I mean offer things that your competition does not – be different, be noticed.   As one example of how I differentiate, if you take the very first step in the renting chain, your website.   I took quite a while putting together a page on the village, the area and the region, which has links and information on all the best things about my location. For every village or attraction mentioned I have looked for the best site to link to that is dedicated to that village or attraction. I scoured the internet for travel articles from magazines, newspapers and guidebooks that are published online, and I link to them, as if to say ‘don’t take my word for it, here is what others think’. Next I will add pictures of as many places mentioned as I can – I may know all about them, but they will just be names to most people.   Why bother with this? Because people choose their holidays by location first, accommodation second. So it makes sense to sell your location at least as much as your property.   If you make your site a genuinely useful resource for your location, you have a ready audience of potential renters right there on your site where you want them.   You also are more likely to get remembered, and bookmarked. And people will think – if you go to this much trouble over your website, then you must also make an effort with your gite, i.e. it won’t be a dump!   I also have a page of beautiful photos taken in January, on a page titled ‘What’s it like in winter?’ to plant the idea of taking a break in the off-season in a place that is beautiful, warmish, and less crowded than usual. Now I will add a similar page for early autumn (spring and summer take care of themselves).   I have seen a great many websites for French rental accommodation, and only a handful bother to do something similar. That’s good news for those that do.   There are many, many other ways to differentiate, all the way down the renting chain, which I won’t bore you with. If you DO want to be bored by them, I write an occasional (free) newsletter on this for holiday rental owners – you can see back issues by clicking on the link in my signature below.    Paolo

Agreed - the conditions are moving against us, not least the fact that many potential renters are becoming owners and siphoning off 'our' renters. It's a double whammy. It's interesting that in the UK, as well as the 12 nightly programmes dedicated to those wanting to buy homes abroad, there is now one on 'How it all went horribly wrong' (can't remember the title). The pendulum is swinging back the other way... Perhaps in a few years there will be loads of programmes on how people lost their shirt buying abroad, and only one on actually buying abroad? Paolo

About this doomful newspaper article...remember that these stories always have an angle in order to get people to read it and ultimately sell the paper. There's no point in a story that basically says 'Bookings are a little harder to come by due to greater supply but things are generally reasonable for gite owners'. Rachel Loos is or was the editor of Elle Decoration magazine. I Googled her name and I think she has moved to France and is writing freelance articles. I found this post of hers in a couple of other forums, placed in September: "HAS MOVING TO FRANCE WRECKED YOUR RELATIONSHIP? Have you found it difficult living and working together; suffered financial stress or discovered you both have different French dreams? I am a British journalist based in France looking for case studies for an article on this surprisingly common problem. Financial remuneration possible. If you are interested email Rachel at" I don't know if this relates to yesterday's article or another one she is writing, but you can see that a post like this is not necessarily looking for a balanced view of the situation. Bad news sells papers! Paolo  

That's a good guess, but I am British it says on my passport. My father is Italian, but he has never been a big talker so I only speak it like a tourist. This is a bit embarrassing with a name like mine (Paolo De Paolis). Paolo

Fil, A few more to add to the questionnaire for prospective bookers: 9. Do you intend to take up smoking between the time of booking and arrival? 10. If you discover a long-lost family member between booking and arrival, will they be coming too and sleeping on the sofa? 10. Are you in the habit of wiping off your make-up on white towels at home? Paolo

Hi, I can't take them myself, but I can recommend the Luberon for cycling. The Luberon is a small place so any location there puts you within cycling distance of hill-top villages that are conveniently dotted around the plain. If they don't mind the owner not speaking English, you could take a look at my friend's place near Menerbes in the Luberon. Type 'Le Mourre' into Google and you'll find it as the top result (don't know if I am allowed to post a url). It's in a very beautiful setting amid the vineyards. Paolo

I have started taking PayPal payments and I am very happy with it. I invite guests to share the 3.9% commission, and they are happy to. It is much more convenient for people outside the Euro/Pound zone than the other options I have, which are bank transfer and bank draft/money order. They don't have to go and queue in a bank, or several banks in some cases. Sometimes they have to be authorised by PayPal before they can send money, but this is painless enough. I like the fact it is instant too, and when it reaches your PayPal account you can transfer it online into your bank account - at no charge. Yes, miracles do happen! When I get a bank transfer I almost always pay a £6 commission, which is half of the total. Sometimes the sender specifies I should pay the whole £12. So I don't mind paying half of the 3.9% for PayPal. Paolo