VisitFrance Calendars

[Coco]

Here's a question for those of you that use the calendar facility on Visit France.  Do you keep it updated?  I know it's not particularly brilliant because it doesn't allow for the fact that you have more than one room to rent out but what I do is click on provisionally booked once I have let one or more rooms and fully booked when all three have been let out. 

I know that gite owners have been saying it's a bad year and I certainly don't have as many advance bookings for July and August as I've had in previous years, but the standard bookings within 1 day and 2 weeks of arrival are doing pretty much the same as usual.  This morning I tried a little exercise of clicking on the dates button on quite a few other B&Bs both in Normandy and other regions to see how others are faring.  Out of all the calendars I clicked on, only one other person seems to be either working the same way as I do or keeping theirs reasonably uptodate - unless of course, we're the only ones with bookings.  Most calendars that I clicked on had no orange or grey squares at all, then a few had the whole of March and April and the first half of May blocked out in orange and I wonder then, whether they are having an extremely good year, or just block the dates out as booked once they have passed to make themselves feel better!

Do some of you leave them as completely clear until you're fully booked?  I've never been sure whether to do this or not but decided on the halfway thing of blocking dates out as provisional once I have let one room because otherwise I thought it looked to potential visitors as though we never get any bookings, then they may wonder why!!!

[Alan]

Yes I do update the calendar every day. But I only update if all my rooms are booked. We have 3 rooms but if they are not all booked then I leave blank. If I have 2 booked and I receive a provisionally booking for the third then I mark that as grey

In all the years we have been doing it we have never really had one year the same. I think in previous years we have been very lucky, as we have mainly always received week or 2 week booking. This year however most of our booking are for 2,3 or 4 days. This time last year nearly all of July and august was booked, but that is not the case this year, however I must say that February march and April are up on previous years. This week however I have seen an increase in enquiries so lets hope things are on the turn

[Lotman]

As we run a Chambre d"Hote in the Lot, like most others who run CdH in  France maintaining booking calendars on all advertised websites would nearly be a full time occupation...bearing in mine that most bookings are usually 3/4 nights and seldom beyond a week.Most websites that we advertise on (around 18 in all) don't seem to cater for CdH calendar bookings.The majority seem  geared up for weekly lets for Gites/Holiday homes, Just booking out 2 nights out of a week would normally mean taking the whole week out on many of the website booking calendars.Can't comment on Visit France as we don't use them.Understand your predicament as we have found the same problem on other advertising sites.

I suspect most owners of rental property whether they live in France or Britain just can't be bothered or simply forget!....when people block out dates this could mean that family and friends are over or that they themselves are away, not necessary that they are having a good season or just kidding themselves!

We keep a few advertising site calendars up to date but that is because we get reminders!....have to say that we do recommend those looking to book a room to e-mail or telephone us for updates on room availability and it seems to work! 

If  your concerned about who's getting what on the bookings spare a thought on a British couple who have a Gite in the next valley to us and have yet to secure a single booking this year to my knowledge!

[Quillan]

I used to put entries in but as others have said it's a full time task. However it does get you to the top of your regional listing so I tend to put today as full just to keep near the top. I have a couple in there where we are full but as said by another poster with 4 rooms you can only use it if you are full. To be honest I would never pay to much attention to them.

[Coco]

I was just curious really as to what others do.  I do find that when I update on VF I get more enquiries so my way of updating is to update the calendar, it really doesn't take that much time, and usually ends up in me getting a few more enquiries, and today two 4 day bookings!!! yippee!  I don't quite understand when people say it would be a full-time job updating.  Especially when they spend time on this forum, I spend about half an hour a day updating the various sites that I'm on that carry calendars and it ends up taking less time than it used to, dealing with queries for dates that are already booked out.

It's very interesting reading different people's approaches to things though.  Just as well we're all different.[:D]

[nimportequoi]

I only have gites, and I update holiday-rentals, holidaylets.net and abritel weekly as with them you go to the top of this listings. I was told by visit-france that all you had to do was click on the update, regardless of whether or not you updated anything and this would ensure you go to the top of the listings. I don't use their calendar as I have 3 properties and have availability on my website.