buying a b/b.

[smudge]

we are thinking of moving to France (Brittany area0 in 2014 but will start looking next year, can anybody suggest the best agents to talk to who speak good english. Is this a good time to look at this type of business as this will be our retirement.

thanks, smudge

[YCCMB]

Someone with a better crystal ball will be along shortly, but just to start things off, if I were you I would have a read of this and other French forums. You'll find that many people will tell you the following:

- If you're intending to rely on B&B/ Ch d'H as your sole source of income, think carefully or think again.

- NOW is not an especially good time. It might be a GREAT time to pick up something cheaply, but ask yourself why, if it's such a great life and sure way to make a living, there are so many B&B's for sale? France is just as badly affected (at least) by the current economic situation as the UK.

- If you can find anyone who will be able to tell you with confidence what will happen between now and 2014, you'd probably make more money for your retirement if you signed them up and offered to act as their agent for 10% of their potential earnings, because most of the world's financial experts seem to be finding it nigh-on impossible to agree about what might happen between now and the end of the month!

[idun]

It may be a good time to buy somewhere, if that is what you fancy. Whether you can make money rather than lose money on the venture, well, none of us can tell you, as was said by Betty.

 

It may be a good time to get your french up to scratch, if you fancy starting a business in France. You have plenty of time, there again there is a lot to learn.

[Quillan]

Betty said it almost all really.

We have seen our 'English' market drop dramatically since 2008 mainly I guess because of the Euro whilst our French and other Eurozone bookings have increased but then we have always marketed ourselves in French and English speaking countries. Most of our English reservations are one nighters these days because we are ideally positioned for those traveling down to the main British region of Spain where things are much cheaper, almost half the price of France and of course English is widely spoken.

There was a time, like when I moved here nearly 11 years ago, when speaking French was not so important but it is now simply because as I said most of our guests are now French or French speaking (Belgians for example).

You will have a shorter season up there because of the weather where as the further south you go the longer the season (Feb to October) but then prices are higher to reflect this.

The other thing you should be aware of is the hours you will work. We start at about 06:30 and finish at about midnight because we offer evening meals. A typical day for me in high season is as follows. Get up and the three S's, off to the bakery, back to lay tables for breakfast (it's outside in summer so you can't do it the night before) and prepare the rest of the breakfast. Breakfast is at 08:30 (don't do an 'English', never have done) and you need to be around to make more coffee, tea etc and clear plates as you go. Hopefully the guest's will leave by 10:00 so you can get in to the rooms to make the beds, empty the bins, add their cups etc to the dishwasher (of we have two), replenish consumables and get the towels in to the dryer which at four rooms takes about two hours. If the guests have been here three nights then the room is stripped, cleaned and new bedding and towels used. That means the old sheets and towels need to be washed and dried (we have two washing machines) and that takes about two hours per room including ironing but you can go off and do other things. That gets us to about 13:00 and time for a snack then it's off to buy fresh items for the evening meal. If I am lucky I can get in an hour, sometimes two kip. At about 16:00 it's time to make deserts for the meal and prep the veg etc. Now I can go set the table for the evening meals then back in to start cooking which gets me to 19:00 when the guests come out for pre dinner drinks. At 19:30 (ish) we sit down for dinner which in French style and ends around 22:00. Then I can clear table, load the dishwashers and put the napkins and tablecloth in the washing machine and off to bed at around 23:30 to midnight.

In between all this there are reservation requests to deal with, bills to prepare and the accounts to be kept up to date. Phone enquiries are the worse because you can't control when they come and of course they always come when your halfway through doing something important.

Weekends are the worse because normally I get a four room changeover.

This is all done with a smile for about eight to ten weeks solid in season with no break. When we finally close at the end of the season I tend to spend the first three days in bed just to recover then a short break and on to house maintenance.

I am telling you this so you get a rough idea what it's like because as a guest you you only see one side of things and most have no idea what goes on 'behind closed doors' as it were.

You also have to be very good with people and sometimes even though your smiling you may have a 'difficult' guest (hopefully very rarely) who quite frankly you would like to tell to 'pea off' but you can't, you just have to bite your lip and smile.

As a friend of mine who had a very successful pub in the UK said who came to run our B&B for week when my MIL died "give me my pub any day, less work and less stress". When we returned he couldn't get back to his pub quick enough for a rest. In short it's not a job for the feint hearted.

It is however a great job and brings a lot of satisfaction if done right. Once I traveled the world, now it comes to me and we have made some wonderful friends along the way.

Money, as Betty said you won't make a living at this, you will need another income, pension etc. The other rule is (somebody told me this who really knew the business) if you have to borrow money to set up or buy a B&B in France then don't, go and do something else, it is an absolute no no.

You might consider Gites. Hard work but at least it's only once a week.

[Val_2]

I am in Brittany and the region is swamped with B&B's/Chambre d'Hotes, Gîtes,Mobile home parks and of course thousands of private family holiday homes so you need to do some very investigative homework indeed. You must not rely on such a business to provide wholly your income, the season is so short here - June to end of August with a few stragglers in between and also the Camping car is a real competitor now especially as you can just pack up and drive on to where the sun is shining. People also want a decent place to spend the night, not some back bedroom and shared facilities these days too!

You need to speak andunderstand French for the business and tax side and not depend on english visitors, but mostly Europeans outside the UK.The problem is not the buying of a property but if you cannot manage it or find your finances won't cover your social charges you maybe left with something you can't shift as many owners are currently finding. I'm afraid its not been very good weather here for the past couple of summers as it was all over by mid July. On the local tourist board we have seen bookings for holiday rentals plummet over the past four or five years and this is a very popular seaside area so to be forwarned is to be forearmed as you will be competing with local well established businesses who know the trade inside out.

[Quillan]

Even more excellent advice there Val. It's refreshing to see somebody being honest about trade levels although I am sure it won't be long before somebody comes along and tells us it's their best year ever for bookings (and that they are all English). [;-)] We have somebody down the road from us who are always full and are having the best year ever. Their B&B has been up for sale for two years now and they can't shift it but then they call it 5 Star (even though it's never been inspected, has an illegal bar and swimming pool) and want well over the odds for it.

That last sentence raises another point for the OP. I would start to read all the legislation, rules etc that you have to abide by for running a B&B. I said illegal pool because its 'in ground', not fenced and has no alarm. It also has a 'floating' cover and they take kids, accident waiting to happen. Illegal bar, well no bar licence (as far as I know you can't get a proper bar licence for a B&B) and sell booze all day even though the guests are not eating there. The maximum licence you can get is to sell booze to people dinning and then only if they have a proper three course meal (not a sandwich, packet of crisps and an orange). There are loads of regs etc and you really need to know them before you look at a place to save unnecessary expenditure to make it legal.

The other thing is how do you work out how much the property is worth as a business. Well as a rule of thumb a French accountant will base any figure over the 10 week high season takings and then average it for the past three years.

So the property has a value as a property, not as a B&B. Then lets say to keep it simple it takes 30k the first year, 20k the second and 10k the last that means the business is worth 20k on top of the property value. For that you should get the website and any publicity associated with the B&B. Generally a B&B will be sold with fixtures and fittings especially in the guest areas.

You can also get an idea of how the B&B is performing by looking it up on Tripadvisor if it's registered with them. Don't take all the comments as gospel either. If you get mainly good reviews and one very bad one it's probably because something that's not normal has happened. We got a bad one this year, one bad out of almost 50. The reason was because we had an English couple and an Argentine couple stay and have dinner. The English couple were extremely rude towards the Argentines to the point where there was almost a fight (it's not too difficult to guess the subject) and try as I could to keep changing the subject I had to ask the English couple to leave the table in the end. That's a holiday those Argentines won't, sadly,  forget in a hurry and of course the English couple left in a huff.  Fortunately this sort of thing has happened (guests arguing) only twice in 11 years but it's not nice for anyone, guest and owner alike.

[Val_2]

Personally if I was looking to do this as a business, prudence with waiting to see how this euro crisis is going to pan out would be the most important factor to consider and the long term effects on the rest of the community. Holidays are the last thing that people are going to spend money on if finances are badly hit and jobs lost!

[Sprogster]

Like the Channel Islands, the tourism industry in northern Britanny has been in decline for years, as with the advent of the low cost carriers such as Ryanair, it is as cheap to fly further south for guaranteed sunshine.

 Also from what I hear there has been a big switch to camping, making life much more difficult for Gites.

I would therefore use your two years to travel around France and don't worry about missing the property market, as house price forecasts for French property are for fairly substantial falls over that period.

[Val_2]

Good points and yes, Brittany has suffered regardless of what gîte owners may say as the figures are taken overall from results of local tourist office enquiries and bookings. The really good setups are the ones that people return to and to be honest as I have mentioned before on these type of threads,when we were inbusiness and doing work at some brit owned properties that were let out as holiday rentals, I would not have put my dog in some of them!