Next year's prices

[Cassis]

It may seem a little early to be thinking about this, but within the next two weeks we have to submit our tarifs for 2007 to Gites de France.  Does anyone else have any view on what change in prices, if any, we should be thinking of for next year? 

This will be the first time we alter our prices and we haven't had a full year of operating yet.  We are still building the business but it has been better than expected for our first year. 

I see general inflation is running at 1.7% and Service inflation at 2.5% if INSEE, the French stats office, is to be believed.

How do other owners decide?

[Miki]

We have left prices in two consecutive years and increased it twice on the bounce as well. I think it is called flying by the seat of your pants !

Remember, with you being with G de Fr like us, will mean, if you mirror

us, a majority of  French clientele. Many are not exactly flush

with money in the current climate and so, one will have to look around

and see how one's prices are in comparison to the local competetion.

We have a few dearer, two of which, have no real reason to be so and a

couple of others certainly have, as they are really excellent places

with their B&B's being  in  Maison de Maitre's.

We have many cheaper, there's the rub but at the end of the day (two

very nice B&B clichés !) one has to make a living, so does one

increase and take a chance, increase because you are worth it, or stick

(as they say in Pontoon !) and risk another year at the same price.

It's all relative and only the owner of each individual place can

really decide that. If I tell you to put the prices up and you lose

clients, what would you say and if I say, stay the same price and you

are full every night, what you gonna say !!

Funny old game Sainty!

[Cassis]

Cheers, Greavesy.  When all's said and done we have to make our own bed and sleep in it.

We're in a funny position because so far we are mainly used as a stopover point by British clientele heading south or returning north to the channel ports and for weekend breaks by the French.  Plus the handful of big car and bike race weeks at Le Mans when all hell breaks loose and we really need another 50 rooms to let and we could charge what we like for a hammock in the barn. 

Although we're with GdF our bookings so far this year are 68% UK, 38% French by value, so you can see the shape of the business is very different to what you get.  Gites de France and the AA account for only 10% - mostly it comes from search engine hits on our website (30%) and word of mouth or referrals (29%).

Thanks for your feedback, anyway.

Phil

[Miki]

Well Sainty,

In your position I would certainly look to raise the nightly prices.You

have the percentage in your favour and I know from our experiences in

the UK, just how much people are prepared to pay for a B&B over

there. Keep it sensible of course, as you are still fairly new and I am

sure the French market will develop in to a larger percentage of your

turnover.

I am forever being surprised by how B&B's in different regions get

varying degrees of success with their advertising mediums. We get a big

response from G de Fr here, I guess it is because of the large demand

for holidays, mid week breaks, weekends etc but we still have to take

in to account the sheer number of B&B's in the Saint Malo, Dinan

and generally the whole of the coastline and hinterland areas.

[Coco]

[quote user="Miki"]Well Sainty,

I am forever being surprised by how B&B's in different regions get varying degrees of success with their advertising mediums.
[/quote]

So am I, and also in the different nationality mixes.  The three of us aren't really that far apart in Normandy/Brittany but so far this year we have been about 20% French, 70% North American, 5% Brit and 5% Southern Hemisphere.  Our August bookings are 100% Brits so far!  Like Cassis, most of them are on the way to or from gites, but at least this year they're stopping for two nights rather than one.

I put my prices up three times in my first year, til I found a level I was happy with.  I put peak season up by 5 euros a night this year but left the rest of the year as it was but I'm not too sure what I'm going to do for next year.  Like Miki says, I think I shall look around at what my close competitors are doing.  The Brit ones are all about the same price as me but the French are all between 5 and 10 euros a night cheaper, so I don't really want to out-price myself.  So at the moment I'm just holding fire.

[Cassis]

We do get a lot of questions from our British guests of the sort 'is that the price per person or per room' (it's per room) so clearly we're not overpriced for the Brit market at present.  Currently we are comparable with other B&Bs in the area, as that's how we set our initial prices last year.  Problem is we need to decide 2007 prices now, so we can't take the easy option of waiting and copying this time!

Apart from being on the north-south run, I think we get a lot of British enquiries because we are the only English run B&B for many a mile around.  In fact I don't know where the next English run B&B is - I'm not aware of any in the Orne or the Sarthe, though I know there are some gites in the Brit hotspots around Domfront and a few other places in the Mayenne. 

Very few of our French competition claim to speak English and those that do generally can't in reality (I know because when we have referred people on to them because we are full, they have come back to us and asked us to ring the other B&Bs for them because they can't make themselves understood).  No-one seems to do high/low season tarifs - maybe that's only common in the more well-known tourist areas like around the coast?

I think we'll stick our prices up by only a conservative amount to cover inflation for next year - if we find that we're still ahead of (or have fallen behind) the business plan this time next year then we'll reassess the pricing strategy for 2008.

Thanks to both of you for your feedback - sometimes it helps just to have someone to run ideas past and to make sure I haven't completely lost touch with reality.

Phil