Starting Chambres d'hte

[Clairesud]

Hi

We have been visiting south-eastern France for a number of years and have decided to start up a Chambres d'hte near a friend in Limoux. I bought two books as guidance; Starting and Running a B&B in France and Buy to Let in France. I am somewhat alarmed that they say that Gites de France demand 15% of your takings for referrals and that it is impossible to make a living out of running a Chambres d'hte!

Is this right? We don't want to live a lavish lifestyle but have some time to wait until we collect our pensions!

Hopefully yours Claire

[Coco]

I've got that "Starting and Running a B&B in France". Some of it is quite useful but a lot of the "facts" are totally wrong! As far as I'm aware you don't have to pay Gites de France anything if you are taking the bookings yourself and not using their booking service (but Miki will be able to answer that better than me). And as for not being able to make a living out of it - well we can't but that's because we only have 2 bedrooms. It also depends on what kind of lifestyle and family you have. If you have two or three kids I don't suppose you could but from our experiences last year (first year) and so far this year, if we had two more rooms I think we could just about get by. There are only two of us and we don't have a mortgage, don't want exotic holidays, only run one car etc etc.

Coco

[Quillan]

Hi,

You won't be far from me then, only about 20 mins away.

The books you mention are OK but some of the stuff about what you need does differ from one region (department) to another and it is a bit out of date now.

Most of the information I found (here and other places) indicated that you will really have to go 'all the way' to 5 letting rooms to POSSIBLY make a living. Then it will depend on your advertising and marketing which many people in the business won't help you with for fear you will then take some of their business.

Most of the people I know of have a second job or the B&B IS the second job.

The other thing you should be aware of is that the area (Aude) is at saturation point. There was an artical recently in a department paper issued by the prefecture in Carcassonne that said there is something like 50 odd beds available to rent in either Gites or Chambres D'Hote per night per person during high season which is only 8 to 10 weeks long. Think of the competition out of season, there must be about 200 beds pp pn then.

When you sell a B&B business accountants will normally use a calcualtion of 10 weeks on the mean price of each room as an indication of POSSIBLE income available which as a VERY rough quide is 4000 per room over 10 weeks (this information I got from French commercial property websites). The trick then is to give value added services to get people to come outside the 10 weeks.

You then are going to loose 2.5k for cotistations the first year and over 3k the second and taxed on 28% of the total turnover but better explainations of these charges and how they work can be found in this section of the forum.

The next thing is all the labour involved, we run 3 rooms at present and on a complete changeover day we are talking one hour per room plus about 1 hr washing and ironing, thats 4 hours of your day gone straight away. Then off to the shops for fresh food, back to do the prep work, lay the tables for dinner and start cooking about 5:30 in the afternoon for dinner at 7.

After dinner, we have 2 dishwashers, there is the washing up to do and laying the breakfast tables. The the best bit, 10 minutes on our own with a cup of tea on the terrace at about 11:30 or midnight before we go to bed. Then it's up a six to walk the dog and get fresh bread etc.

Look through this part of the forum and you will find some good information (especially Miki's and JP1's stuff) which I have used and it worked fine for me, also look at..

http://www.livingfrance.com/dcforum/DCForumID50/52.html

http://www.livingfrance.com/dcforum/DCForumID50/50.html

http://www.livingfrance.com/dcforum/DCForumID50/64.html

http://www.livingfrance.com/dcforum/DCForumID50/33.html

http://www.livingfrance.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=29&forum=DCForumID50&omm=0

There is some good stuff in the last one if you ignore some of what appears to verbal bashing which is down to people not really understanding the business at the time (I was one of them), ignore that bit and look at what Miki says about GDF, it's very useful.

The other thing to think on is how much it will cost you to actually set it up, beds, linin, towels, plates, decorating, pots and pans, heated trolly's etc. The cost of advertising (set a budget) look how many copies of books on B&B's in France have been sold on Ebay and who wrote them, look for websites on B&B's in a given area and see who comes top of the list and work out why.

There are a lot of people who reallly think it's easy (and make it sound easy) 'put a few signs up and an ad in the paper and wait for the money to roll in', I wish. We know of a couple who did just that, they are broke and are having to sell up and go home.

If you are still keen after this lot then the very best of luck to you.

Just to say before I go. It's very rewarding, we have met people from all over the world, have had some wonderfull evenings with guests and the pleasure of seeing somebody leave with a big happy smile on their face, totally relaxed, is worth all the money in the world.

Chris

http://www.chambresdhote.com
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/easybook-france/