Starting up B & B in Paris area ?

[parischic]

I live  (for past 24 years) in NW suburbs of Paris in a spacious house with garden - a 30 min train ride from Paris and a short drive to some great countryside & little-known villages (Ile Adam, Chantilly, Auvers sur Oise, Pontoise - away from all the tourists ;-) I'm close to A16 and A15 motorways. Would there be a market for B&Bing / homestays in my neck of the woods ?

My idea would be to test the waters - I've already had many guests & friends of family to stay over the years who love my home & I enjoy having them - they also like trying out their French on my DH ! I was also a tour guide in  a former life & love showing people the area. I intend to start with 1 room & see how it goes, then take it from there ( when my 2 daughters leave home I'll have 2 more rooms..). but apart from buying some new towels from TJ Hughes and 2 sets of bed linen from BHS on a recent visit to UK, don't know where to start !!

I'd be grateful for any input from you very experienced B&Bers !

 

[Anton Redman]

As a business idea this makes sense to me, when we had a home/lived south of London we made frequent weekend trips to France and the north side of Paris. the easily accessible hotels and restaurants close to the channel ports we frequentlty full at the weekends.    

[mascamps.com]

Going by some of the hits recently on ourinns.org, yes.

I'd say that the mix of people you'd get would be quite different from those that the rest of us. For a start, GdF are a non-runner (they won't take places that have more than 1500 inhabitants) which in itself will skew the mix of nationalities away from French a little.

As it happens, I'm looking for somewhere to stay overnight in/around Paris in the next week, so if you want to give it a trial run, let me know and I'll volunteer to be your very first guest!

 

Arnold

 

[Coco]

Likewise, our Finnish guests who leave tomorrow are looking for accommodation close enough to get into Paris easily, but out of the city, and on the north side, because they're heading home, so that would have been two more guests if you were already up and running

The location, being north of Paris, will be good for a lot of non-French visitors, ie Brits, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Germans.  Especially as it sounds as though you'd be in quite a good location for those flying into Beauvais.

As this is clearly not your sole income, I think the way you are thinking of doing it sounds pretty sensible.  Start off small, without too much capital expense, and if it suits you and you seem to have the business, then you can always expand it.  Extra bedding and towels sounds like a good start to me.

[parischic]

Thanks for these words of encouragement and yes B&Bing would not be my sole source of income, so I can just dip my foot in the waters as it were - and see what happens over time. I had assumed that visitors to Paris would prefer to stay intra-muros and not in the burbs but there's only 1 way to find out - and that's to do it ! Two plus points : Beauvais airport is 35 mins away from me and the Val d'Oise is currently really pushing tourisme verte in the area.... Hmmm, now what's my next step ??

[Coco]

Get a website and get yourself on some of the free or cheap sites!  Also get some business cards made up and leave them at the airport and your local tourist office.

People are always asking me if I know somewhere they can stay outside of Paris and then get the train in.  I think most people are terrified of driving in Paris!

[mascamps.com]

I think it might be a bit late this time of year to get a website into the search engines (it takes about a month). Most listing sites let you on without a website so that's probably the way to go short-term (keep a note of where you list with so you can add your website in due course).

I could add a semi-shameless plug for a website listed below my name there but others have been getting bookings for it anyway. Also apparently worthwhile for the French market is www.chambres-hotes.org which is giving me a lot of hits but it's hard to say if there have been any bookings from it as the French tend to look you up then phone.

Personally I wouldn't bother with the airport as we wasted a lot of time last year putting cards and brochures out in our local one and got no bookings at all. I think it's true to say that most (all?) Ryanair people have already arranged their accommodation before they fly so you need to catch them before they get to the airport.

Definitely on the tourist office though. We don't get a lot of bookings from them but the French do look them up and we picked up a nice wedding reception this August from them because of that.

 

Arnold

 

[parischic]

Well this is the latest on my B&B venture. I had my first "unofficial guest " - remember I'm only dipping my toe in the water  ;-) -female 50-something Australian backpacker )  staying in my double room but with 1 single bed.. (am buying 2 twin matching singles this week) For 30 euros per night B&B and 12euros for 3-course meal with wine, she got the following :

2 nights in a large single room overlooking garden, with sole use of bathroom

Breakfast : croissant, bread, 3 types of jam, honey, yogurt & fromage blanc, fresh  fruit bowl, dreid frutis and nuts, cereal, orange juice, coffee

Dinner (homemade): seafood taboulé, chicken tajine, moroccan pastries, fresh fruit, coffee, wine

as she'd been backpacking, in addition she requested - at 9pm the first evening : to wash her clothes in my washing machine (& I dried and ironed them..too)

the 2nd day she asked for a bucket to wash her smalls

she came down for breakfast at 10.45 the first day (she was v tired) - went out at 1.30pm

asked for something to calm her mosquito bites (I gave her Betafine)

asked to use my computer to check her emails (which I did)

she left the bathroom flooded with water twice which I had to mop up !! and clean bath

I gave her lifts to and from the station

I gave her a pack of juice, a banana and a few biscuits to send her on her way !!

So, how did I do ??

This has been a sharp learning curve for me, naive as I am (absolutely no more backpacker types for a start !). I realise I have to make some "rules" and enforce them somehow right at the start (how do you do this without having a "réglementation" stuck on the wall in every room - how do you accomodate "unreasonable" requests at "unreasonable" times and still stay flexible.)  Also referring to a comment on the thread about What do you give your guests for breakfast - I reckon that many folks want to pay the minimum and want a max 5-star service !!! Ya gets what ya pays for !!!

 

 

 

 

[mascamps.com]

First, that's way, way under pricing yourself. Hard to say exactly without seeing your place but this is high season so more like 50€.

I'd say 15€ for the meal is about average though my feeling is that 15€ is underpricing.

Nice breakfast. Maybe add another 6€ to the 50€.

You have to say "no" to using your washing machine. Or charge 5€ or so.

We're relatively lenient on departure times if there's nobody in after. This will not happen in high season when you're fully operational. You need to be firm on checkout times or people will add hours and hours sometimes.

"asked for something to calm her mosquito bites (I gave her Betafine)"

NOOOOO. She could sue you for prescribing medicine if she gets a reaction to it.

"asked to use my computer to check her emails (which I did)"

NO. A computer, yes. Your own one, no. Sooner or later a guest is sure to mess up your system and you've zero privacy too.

"she left the bathroom flooded with water twice which I had to mop up !! and clean bath"

Learn to live with such things

"I gave her lifts to and from the station"

Chargeable. We charge 6€ per person, minimum 12€ for a 20 minute drive to the airport.

"I gave her a pack of juice, a banana and a few biscuits to send her on her way !!"

That's a packed lunch, or nearly. ie about 6€

Rules... we ran off a "services" page. It's not so much a list of rules (ie restrictions) but rather a list of things that we do. Drop me a line and I can mail you a copy.

In general a CdH is something that has two star prices but five star (ie personal) service.

Good start but watch the costs.

 

Arnold