Slave Labour?

[sixtysomething]

Hi all - still trying to find out the truth about running gites. Being in the hospitality industry we know all about long hours and hard work, but there seems to be a divergence of opinion about running gites. The forum has lots of postings saying things like "60 hour week" "never worked so hard before" etc etc whilst when we attended a "Running a Gite" Course (you'll know who operates them) the Gite owner who was taking part said this wasn't true and that while changeover day was hard, the rest of the time was much easier. Suspect the truth lies between the two and how much you make yourself available for the guests, how much land you have to maintain, how much washing and ironing you have to do etc. We are in our mid fifties and don't want (or possibly have the stamina) to jump from the frying pan of running a pub restaurant with lots of difficult staff into a fire of 24/7 eternal washing, ironing and cleaning all on our ownsome.

Would be glad to hear how you find it

[Liz]

LAST EDITED ON 18-Jun-04 AT 04:01 PM (BST)

It rather depends what you mean by running gites. If you just have one, near your own property, probably the owner you met was pretty near the mark. If you are talking about a group of properties, or, worse still several scattered around it is a completely different thing. You are right that much depends on how much land you have, and certainly a pool will take a lot of time, but you might well have these anyway. You are also right that it depends how much time you want to devote to your guests, if you see yourselves as jolly hosts of family fun and games, organising the barbie and boules match it will obviously take rather more time than if you take a back seat. Unless you are running an extensive gite complex I can't see that you will be employing staff. Quite a lot depends also whether you are into DIY or whether you are going to have to call on a plumber for a blocked drain or some other tradesman for running repairs. If you can't do it yourselves the need to get someone along at short notice could certainly cause a few extra grey hairs.

Have you ever stayed in a gite, or self catering any where else? If you haven't I suggest you try that out and you can then assess the sort of work you would be looking at.

Personally we only have one small place which is adjacent to our home. On changeover day we go frantic for a concentrated period but the rest of the week is generally free for us to do as we wish. Apart from last week when we spent the whole of one day helping out the guest who had locked his keys in the car, but that is another story.

Liz (29)