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We have almost killed ourselves (husband fell off ladder on roof and I ripped tendon in foot and had to tile 3 bathrooms on crutches) to get our property up and running for painting holidays and Chambres d'hote. We realise we are about 3 months too late in advertising the business but the renovation works are still going on.

Yesterday, we finished an area of the house and at last have a room to offer. The other 2 are almost ready. We have just signed up with Visit France and the first enquiry was one of the dodgy African emails. Oh good! We went into our local tourist office who wanted 40 euros to display our cards! Oh good! A friend who was going to visit and also pay us, has had to cancel. Great! Our website is attracting interest but is oh so slow.

As we are working flat out still, we are not sure where else to market our business economically and quickly. Like everyone else we are in need of customers toute suite. Has anyone got any suggestions?

 

www.pictureburgundy.com

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We are a gite not a CDH but here goes.

In our first season we were late but got some bookings from something that was the French version of Loot. It has regional paper editions and an on-line presence. I chose the big cities for the paper editions.

When we were looking around and staying in CDH's there was a general willingness for ones that were full to refer to neighbouring ones. You might try that tack ?

Good luck

 

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The French papers are a good idea.  Presumably because they don't have the hastle of ferries or flights the French often book at the last minute.  Two weeks ago I had only 10 nights booked for the whole of July, now I have 34.  Last weekend, (French holiday weekend) I had three lots of people phoning up for accommodation for that same night but had to turn them away because we were full with people who had booked only two or three days earlier!  So there's still hope for August.  Also, do a search on Google for free websites, many will give you an introductory two or three months free.  Do it again with the keywords in French to see what French websites pop up - these are invariably cheaper than the UK sites. 

I've just had a quick look at your website and may I make a couple of suggestions?  You don't have any photos of the house or rooms - as our current guests said this morning "we like to know what we're getting ourselves into"  so this could deter some people as often no pictures means it's not that nice (not that I'm suggesting your place isn't of course!!!)  You also say you have two bedrooms with private bathrooms and a third with shared facilities.  Who are they sharing with?  I know that certainly Gites de France do not allow guests to share your own facilities and I'm not sure if that's a general ruling or specific to them.

Your pricing is a little ambiguous in that you say prices are for full board, breakfast, lunch and dinner (God, you're going to be busy! Breakfast and dinner usually keeps me pretty fully occupied) but then you say that you "suggest" people eat out at local restaurants at least twice, so is it full board or not?

The dates for all your specific breaks also run back to back more or less.  So this is going to deter anyone who wants to come independently for one or two nights - and certainly now at this time of year you'll get a lot of those.

Finally, on your booking page you ask for full payment at least 8 weeks before arrival.  And cancellation must be at least 8 weeks before arrival or the full amount will be charged.  I know you're doing activity holidays but this is most unusual for B&B and again, could deter people and will certainly stop any last minute bookings.

Please take all of the above as constructive criticism and not just knocking you.  They are all things that could hinder your bookings.

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Go for the free sites first. ourinns, of course but also www.chambres-hotes.org seems to get me a lot of hits (can't say if we've had any bookings from them as the French normally look you up then phone).

You've probably missed a lot of VF bookings as they seem to come relatively early in the year.

Tell the tourist office that you're open and put a few brochures in the local attractions. Be careful with the number of brochures as it's an expensive way to get business.

 

 

Arnold

 

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Thanks Coco,

I'm really pleased that you have responded to the contents of the website. It is quite hard to explain on a site that we are basically trying to run organised breaks such as the art holidays etc but are also prepared to do bed and breakfast only! I will attempt to alter the site to make it a little more comprehensive. When I do, perhaps you will give me some more feed back and I certainly need constructive criticism. 

Having managed to almost restore this ancient timbered maison, with all the associated problems, serving three meals a day to guests on a six day break now seems like a doddle! 

I have no fear. I now just need bookings!!!!

Thanks,

 

www.pictureburgundy.com

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As we're now into the summer, I'd drop the "8 weeks in advance" requirement at least for the summer. As Coco implies, more like one week would be more appropriate for an activity type holiday at the moment. Almost everyone books at the last minute at the moment.

We've also been getting a considerable number of last minute French staying. Usually, we expect the bulk of our bookings to be around two weeks ahead but now it's more like 2 days.

Add either paypal.co.uk or nochex.com as a payment method as this will let people pay you by credit card (all but essential these days).

Eurocheques don't exist anymore. If you are accepting cheques in euros (which isn't the same thing as a "eurocheque"), it needs to be from a French bank as otherwise you're looking at major league bank charges.

Forget the travellers cheques method. You are just asking for arguments when (and it will be when) a heap of them go missing. Likewise for cash. One method that might be worthwhile is to get people to buy a prepaid cash card, post it to you and e-mail the PIN; they are available in Thomas Cook as far as I know.

If you are mainly aiming at UK customers, it may be worthwhile to quote prices in sterling (you will need a UK bank account to pay them into). It's definitely worthwhile to have a UK phone number; 0871 numbers are free and can be redirected to your French phone (see www.ourinns.org/en/owners.htm for the link).

Be wary of the free airport pickups. We charge the equivalent of about 50c a kilometre and that's just breakeven. It's worthwhile beefing up the transport page, though do the other things first. It may be worthwhile to organise affiliate links for the various bits of transport; we get about £5 a day if people rent a car from us for instance.

You need lines on the booking form if it's to be posted. I'm not really clear if you intend people to email it or post it. As we're into the summer, you want it e-mailed but it doesn't look setup for that. This might sound picky, but it's absolutely essential that people have no doubts as to how to book with you.

You need proper insurance cover for the times that people do silly things. Saying that you hold no responsibility just won't cut it in court. It's not drastically expensive.

The font you've used looks a bit peculiar from this end. Can't quite put my finger on why though.

 

 

Arnold

 

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Just one other thing.  YOou say you are in Bresse but according to two French maps we have there is no such place as Bresse.  Do you mean Bourg en Bresse?  Presumably you do, and it may be referred to just as Bresse locally.  I vaguely know the Burgundy region (that's where I want to retire to) so I had a pretty good idea of where you meant, which is why when Bresse didnt appear in the index I looked up Bourg en Bresse, but for the stranger to that part of France, not only can they not currently see a picture of your house on the web but they can't even find the town on the map.

The other bit of advice that Arnold gave me was to have a toll free US phone number, less than $5 a month but it has certainly helped (I think)  We've taken two bookings this summer by phone from the States, which perhaps we wouldn't have got if people hadn't been able to phone direct on a toll free basis.

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A big thanks to all replies. I've taken it all on board and am at this very moment attemting to alter my website.

All the financial advice will prove to be invaluable I'm sure and I will definitely have a go with paypal.

Thanks again,

www.pictureburgundy.com

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I wasn't thinking about the tollfree number for yourselves as I hadn't thought of it as being an area that gets a lot of Americans. On the other hand, it doesn't cost a whole lot and has the side effect of increasing your search engine rankings considerably (you'd be surprised at how many people search for "1-800 B&B"). Although we've not had a whole lot of people calling us on the 800 number, we've seen a considerable increase in the number of Americans & Canadians booking this year which we suspect is partly due to us looking that bit more "American/Canadian friendly" through having it.

Anyway, the link is on the owners page at ourinns.org . Get an 800 number rather than an 888 number as, although both are tollfree, it's the "800" that people tend to search for.

You should work terms like "B&B" and "chambres d'hotes" into the text in addition to your existing "bed and breakfast". Google looks at the text so, at present, somebody looking for "B&B" won't find you. Don't forget to add all those to the keywords tag on your pages too.

I'll second coco's comment about "Bresse"; it isn't listed on Autoroute although Savigny is.

 

Arnold

 

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Coco said "...The other bit of advice that Arnold gave me was to have a toll free US phone number, less than $5 a month but it has certainly helped (I think) We've taken two bookings this summer by phone from the States, which perhaps we wouldn't have got if people hadn't been able to phone direct on a toll free basis"

Am I right in thinking you are paying $60 per year for the toll free number and you have got just two bookings throught it ? Let's say you even get another couple, personally I don't find that good value, especially as you cannot be sure they would not have emailed you anyway.

We get quite a few who call us and many more who email us.

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It's even friendlier if you offer the rooms for free !

But seriously Arnold, I am afraid you are talking a completely different picture of running an everyday Bed and Breakfast in France. We are pretty much full for all July, we are full for most of May and June, we are full in August and much of September, October is busy the first 11 days of November are always full then we shut. That's not a boast but just how it is, now tell me what can be fuller than full but your marketing seems to be going full steam for the Carlton in Cannes.

Americans are quite low in their numbers that will use B&B's in much of France. Chasing them is not the way for us. I guess for Coco, she is in the best area, along with Paris and the Cote d'Azur for American tourists but any costs per head gained, has to be in unison with the number she gets. Coco said around $5 per month, you are saying $2 per month. The goalposts have moved.But read on and they move back again

Your increase is over one year, you will find that just as likely to be a natural progression as you did not have any publicity before anyway. You really do seem to complicate it all, we have friends with 7 gites, 5 B&B rooms who advertise as most do, in mags and on the Net. They have been here for 17 years, they have a credit card machine and she has been an IT specialist, so has the knack of keeping their places very high up on the search engines. That's it, full to the rafters year after year. I would bottle their business acumen and show that the way they do it all. Basically using a simple booking system (complicating matters there, will certainly lose you clients) and full on with the net and spending money on decent advertising (something you admit you don't like to do !!)

We have learned a lot from them (and them from us I believe) in this business and sorry, it isn't anywhere near as complicated as you post. But there you go, what works for one etc etc but I'll stick with my old but tried and trusted system (if I can remember it )

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Have to say we have an American tourist in Quillan, just the one. I spoke to her outside one of the bars and mentioned there were not many of her fellow country people here this year and also asked why that might be. Her reply was along the lines of the fact that the exchange rate is now so bad with the dollar and that if it were not for the fact she had agreed to meet some friends here this year she also would not have come. I also know of a couple of American holiday homes and none of the owners have come this year because it's just to expensive. I must confess I don't follow exchange rates so I don't know if the rate is good or bad and as we don't advertise for Americans I would not really be interested anyway.
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[quote]We have almost killed ourselves (husband fell off ladder on roof and I ripped tendon in foot and had to tile 3 bathrooms on crutches) to get our property up and running for painting holidays and Chamb...[/quote]

"We went into our local tourist office who wanted 40 euros to display our cards! Oh good!"

As well as everything else other people have suggested, my inclination would be to bite the bullet and cultivate the Tourist Office.  In this area at least (Eymoutiers - 87), the tourist office are very good at sending people who jsut arrive in town with no accommodation booked to those on their books, and at this time of the year we get a lot of business, not just 1 nighters, this way.  Our experience with the French on holiday is that they are very 'last minute' at organising and often end up in our local TO.

Bonne chance.

Jan

PS sorry about the messy quote - just can't get the hang of this!

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It's even friendlier if you offer the rooms for free !

Don't laugh, but we actually did that as an experiment on ebay last year! OK, free room but compulsory meal purchases (at normal meal prices).

Oh, I know that you can't be 120% full alright but we're not yet at 100% although I suspect that we'll be very close to that from May to August next year if we can keep up the pace with the marketing.

Coco is certainly in about the perfect place for getting Americans and I fully expect her to get very good returns on the tollfree number. It is certainly different for other areas which is why I didn't suggest it to the original poster. The charges are basically $2 a month (or $4 depending on where you read telcan's site) plus call charges of something like 5c a minute.

True enough re the progression year on year. What I meant was that the proportion of American/Canadians that we've been getting has been increasing. We're keen to do that as we were starting to get too high a proportion of brits and want to diversify our nationality split.

I will spend on decent advertising. It's that there are so many naff sites out there looking for money that I have issue with. That time I had a really big search for them back in February there were loads looking for anything from 40€ to 100€ and few of them offering anything of real value for the money (nice site, decent search ranking, etc.).

As you say, it's really hard to know what will work for you at the off.

Don't know about them, but I learnt a lot off you Miki. We've been getting a nice stream of guests from some of the things that you suggested months ago.

Quillan, one thing that constantly amazes me is how different your market is from mine yet we're just down the road a bit. For instance, in June we were 73% British, 10% French yet I think you said a few months back that you've hardly any brits! I hadn't thought it was as "bad" as that, but you can see Miki why we're keen to build up the non-brit customer base.

 

Arnold

 

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Americans are quite low in their numbers that will use B&B's in much of France. Chasing them is not the way for us. I guess for Coco, she is in the best area, along with Paris and the Cote d'Azur for American tourists but any costs per head gained, has to be in unison with the number she gets. Coco said around $5 per month, you are saying $2 per month.


I just checked and I got it wrong!  We pay $2 as well, so for me it has been a good investment.  We've had two 4 night bookings from it, so that's 400 euros worth of rooms plus 135 euros worth of dinners that have also been booked for an investment of (so far) about $10.  If the enquiries stop coming I can always terminate the number.  However, as Arnold also said, it does make you look "North American friendly" and I have to say that when I questioned some of our guests about this being the first year since 9/11 that we have seen Americans we were told that although many got their courage to fly back quite quickly, they personally (and many people they know) wondered what sort of welcome they would get in France, following all the Iraq stuff.

And you're spot on about where they go Miki, this year the Americans and Canadians are not only putting the jam on our bread but the butter as well!!!  UK bookings seem to be the ones that are down for us.  And all of those who come here have already "done" Paris and are then either heading off to London or the cote d'Azur!!!!  We also had a French guy here last week who said he finds it amazing that all the Americans he has spoken to when in the States who say they have "done" France have in fact visited cote d'Azur, Paris the D-Day beaches and Mont St Michel.  COming from Alsace he was most put out that they felt that with these 4 stops they had "done" France!!

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"Quillan, one thing that constantly amazes me is how different your market is from mine yet we're just down the road a bit. For instance, in June we were 73% British, 10% French yet I think you said a few months back that you've hardly any brits! I hadn't thought it was as "bad" as that, but you can see Miki why we're keen to build up the non-brit customer base."

The low perdentage is because we only advertise on two UK major sites and a few free ones. Most of our advertising is aimed at France so that accounts for our high French intake as well as Spain, Germany, Netherlands etc.

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And probably more once the GdF membership kicks in Chris.

At that stage are you at now ? I know you gained 3 epis, being nosey,do you know what will it cost you in a normal year when you are in the guide books, regional and nationally and all charges included ? I ask, as I see from what I have read, the Creuse and Limousin are quite a lot cheaper than what we are charged here in Brittany.

Arnold, I am surprised that your turnover is over 70% Brits so far down the country in France. I guess though, it is relative to what the actual turnover of a place is. For instance, 4 bookings, 3 of which are British then it is 75% (well I think it is !)but it is some what false as the figures are low. I suspect that as the years go by and as the turnover increases, the that percentage will drop, it it doesn't...sell up and move North or buy Chris out !!

The reason we do not get many Brits is two fold, one; most of our adverts are based in France, although as you know, we are with several English speaking sites, some that work, some that don't and some, I haven't got a clue but as I stated before, being full (or as near as one can get)is the name of the game and how one does that is really to "push" yourself on the folks that actually live in France. We can be full at weekends just with people from Rennes, (yes just 30 minutes or so away, Le Weekend is alive and well here) or not too much further from Nantes, Finistere, Morbihan and Cotes d'Armor and two; The Brits tend to use gîtes more in this area or just take short stays, sure we have some 10-14 day (rare)and an average stay is probably around 3 nights, slightly more in May, June, September and October but they too often book later than they should and so we are all too often full when they want to book, (normally one nighters plus evening meals for the ferry to Blighty).

Coco, 4 night stays for Americans, now that is rare, even Paris and PACA struggle to keep those fast moving (if it's Tuesday etc) peeps that long but of course the war and its historical places, mean that Normandy is worthy for them, of a longer stay.

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I was quite surprised myself at our % British. If anything, I'd have put money on your percentage being higher. It's growing too: we started with about 40% British 40% French but now it's averaging about 50% British (June was unusual) and 10% French. This isn't a low absolute figure either: whilst we're not at your 100% for July, we should come in around 60-70%.

What's happened is not so much that we're deliberately targetting the UK market but that whilst you're filling up with French from GdF, we're filling up with (mainly) Brits from Ryanair. We've actually been going out of our way to grow other sources of guests but the UK guests have grown faster.

We find that it's the French that book very late here and quite often we no longer have the rooms available that they're looking for I suspect. In our own case, this isn't as obvious as we operate mainly via booking systems as opposed to the "on request" basis that I gather you operate on ie the requests that fail don't even reach us.

Ah, but 4 nights for an American/Canadian isn't that rare. Our record is 6 nights though 2 or 3 is much more common.


Arnold

 

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Coco, 4 night stays for Americans, now that is rare, even Paris and PACA struggle to keep those fast moving (if it's Tuesday etc) peeps that long but of course the war and its historical places, mean that Normandy is worthy for them, of a longer stay.

Yes indeed it is rare.  They normally think they can do Utah, Omaha, St Mere Eglise and Mnt St Michel with one overnight stay!!!  In both these situations they originally wanted two nights to do all of the above but by talking to them, (via the toll free phone:cool I have convinced them that to do justice to the beaches and Mt St Michel they really need longer here.  The first lot have already been, and thanked me profusely for persuading them that they needed longer (and even left a 20 euro tip in the bedroom!)  The others are due in a  couple of weeks.  Hopefully they will feel the same!

BTW  I'm sure I'm being dim, but what is PACA?

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Sorry, when we were down that region, it was common to see it so often that it was in your face in one way or another quite regularly. It simply means Provence Alpes Cote D'Azur

Here's their website

www.cr-paca.fr

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We don't actually get so many Brits in July and August but thats due to a couple fo factors. People come to our area for sports or walking and cycling. The Brits come when it's not so hot. We get more 'hits' the French part of our website than the English side, about double I think. We also get people for the weekends because they come to the events held locally. This has increased since we put a 'Whats On' section on our website. I see not many people do this but if you can direct link to your tourist office 'whats On' page its well worth it.

What with BNB, GDF and Clevacances (our tourist office requires the latter for inclusion on their website) I hope we will be frantically looking for alternative accomodation for our guests in the coming years.

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Quillan,

Yet another difference - we get nearly four times the hits on the english site as the french. I've no idea why.

Our tourist office "what's on" is rubbish. We have quite an extensive events page ourselves and have even had a few people mail/call us assuming that WE are the tourist office! I'd also recommend a regional guide with things to see and do. Ours is somewhat over the top now  (www.mascamps.com/region/en.htm) but was built up week by week one place at a time, something that I can thoroughly recommend as a) it gives you a fantastic resource to attract people and b) it lets you talk about the places that you've been to.

Having said that, we have been getting more and more weekenders, to the extent now that we expect to be completely full over the next three weekends (that's about as far out as people book for the weekends).

What with BNB, GDF and Clevacances (our tourist office requires the latter for inclusion on their website) I hope we will be frantically looking for alternative accomodation for our guests in the coming years.

Do remember us in that case

 

Arnold

 

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