gites de france or not?????

[stephenc]

hi there

We are new to France and currently renovating a property (region 87) We have just been to visit our local Mairie office to discuss the possibility of offering rooms to let (B&B) when we are fully renovated etc which our Maire was very positive about and welcoming.

He has pointed us in the direction of Gites de France / Clevacance (apoligies if spelt wrong) for any further help and assistance. As it will be about 6 months before we are anywhere near being ready for paying guests we are wondering if it is worth following that route yet. What exactly (other than advertising) would they be able to offer help with? We are also wondering that to become a member of those organisations do you have to be registered with the Chamber of Commerce? As far as I can make out if you join the Chamber of Commerce you will be billed straight away regardless of any income earned. As we do not plan to earn any income at this point is it worth registering???? Can you just register when you are up and running and hopefully earning????

As I mentioned we are new to this so any advice would be great.

Take care - Stephen

[Quillan]

The first thing is you must register with the Chambres de Commerce if you meet any of the following.

When does one become professional?

You become classed as professional if your annual income (invoiced and inclusive of tax) is:

• Higher than 23 000 Euros,
• Lower than 23 000 Euros, but higher or equal to 50% of your total income.

In the case of you meeting any of the above it is obligatory that you register with the Chambres de Commerce.

 

This is from a booklet called Les Locations Saisonnières en Meubles published by the Ministère de L’Economie Des Finances ET de L’Industrie and dated April 2006.

 

You can get round your cotistations in some cases by registering for tax now with the Tresor Public. They should put you on the Micro Biotic system. By doing this you will have some actual tax figures. When you got to register with the Chambres de Commerce you pay the 2,538 Euros* for the first year then they will help you write a letter (well mine did) attached my tax form which then gave me a massive reduction. The only problem is that if you go over the new level the whole lot becomes due. The second years amount can also be reduced from 3,746 Euros* by the same method. After this you pay as a percentage. I got this information from a forum member a few years back when I started for which I was very grateful.

 

* These may be different now as they are old figures.

It will depend regionally how people like Gite de France work. Although there are rules and they are the same for all of France it’s down to how the people in your department interpret those rules. They will also set the charges for being a member. The benefit of joining GDF is quite large as you are joining a group that specifically look after your interests and quite vigorously so. You can see from posts by ‘Miki’ the sort of things they get involved in and at very high levels within government always working to your benefit. You can also arrange cheap insurance through them and they have arrangements with some companies to supply discounted items such as mattresses etc.

Clévacances are not as expensive as GDF to join. Their inspections are just the same (well nearly) as GDF but their advertising is a lot less. They tend to be run by the departmental tourist office. Many departments now require some form of inspection before they will allow you to advertise and joining Clévacances is a cheap way of getting inspected and registered.

As to which one is best I won’t say because it’s different horses for different course and it depends on the needs of the individual and what their marketing strategy is. The thing I would say is that GDF fights more for it’s members which actually means everyone benefits be they a member or not. Personally I belong to both plus a third commercial organization but then I look at it from a business point of view and if anybody I advertise with does not produce the ‘goods’ for the money I have spend I won’t use them again.

When to join, well in some ways I would wait till I was up and running but you can ask for information now without any commitment. One reason for doing this is that you can get the sizes of the rooms from them for the grading system; you don’t want to miss out on a possible 3 Epis because your room is half a square metre too small as has happened to others here. It’s easy perhaps to adjust your room sizes if renovating. Some regions offer grants for making a Chambres d’Hôtes and sometimes the criteria can be that you must be a member of either of these two organisations. As I said this in some regions and departments so its best to find out now if any of this applies in your area.