Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Listings’ Category

OK, so you’ve got a lovely B&B, brilliant location and beautifully decorated but what about attracting some guests?

That’s usually the step that fells most B&B owners as they generally get into the business by accident, figuring that if they have a lovely place then loads of people will come to stay.

Unfortunately, it rarely works like that and before long they start looking around for places to advertise this “heaven on earth” that they’ve created. Sadly, some of the owners leave that step far too late: you should get going on your marketing efforts as early as possible, even if it means that you are advertising the place before it’s ready and need to add “ready next Easter” or whatever.

As usual, we’re getting going on our own marketing for the new year fairly soon. In addition to the annual upgrade of our family of listings sites (OurInns) we’re rolling out two new initiatives in that area: Whole Earth Guide already and soon Inns4U. All are free listings sites so if you have a B&B or self-catering (vacation rental) place now’s a good time to add yourself here.

From this side of the Atlantic, America is largely seen as a hotel type holiday destination but, of course, the whole range of accommodation options are available. There is one difference though… the quality of accommodation is much higher than you’ll be used to.

Take for example the self-catering accommodation options (vacation rental in American). Las Vegas is one place where you’d definitely be thinking hotels but you can rent a quite spectacular penthouse apartment (condo in American) right in the centre.

More typically villa type places include Lake Tahoe where you can choose from a whole range of luxurious villas in a spectacular location and the more central Palm Springs area.

How much for all this? Well, a typical villa runs from around $1500 to $2000 per week (£750 to £1000) which is more expensive than the average in Europe but then what you’re getting for the money is a whole lot more than is generally available.

You always get a lot of peculiar phone calls around this time of year.

“I just booked a room on your website. Can you tell me if it has a bathroom?”. Well, no we couldn’t because they had quite literally just booked the room and it can take a few hours before we get the confirmation email or fax….. about 70% of the French who book online make phone calls within 5 minutes of making the booking to confirm that we’ve received it.

“I’m on your website right now. It says that there’s a room available. I want a room with a bathroom.”. Yes, it’s EUR 57. “No, it isn’t it says that it’s EUR 49”. That’s for the room with a shared bathroom, the room you want is EUR 57. “Can’t I have it for EUR 49?”. Well, no, but you can have the room with a shared bathroom for EUR 49. “But, I want an ensuite room”. Yes, that’s EUR 57….. We get a LOT of conversations like that one!

“I’m on your website right now. Can I book over the phone?” Yes, I just need a credit card and expiry date. “I’m paying by Cheques Vacances”. That’s OK, I still need a credit card number to guarantee the room. “I’m paying by Cheques Vacances I don’t need to give you a credit card number.” Yes, you do, we need it to guarantee the room…. after 10 mins of this he cancelled the booking that he hadn’t made.

“We’re here for the room.” Have you a reservation? “No, but we checked online a few days ago and you had rooms available today.” Yes, but we’re full today. Did you make a reservation?…. Surprisingly we’ve been getting a number of people lately who’ve just checked availability a few days earlier and assume that we won’t get bookings after they check.

A new development this year is that people are starting to book online whilst they’re on the way. Then they phone to check that we’ve received the reservation about a minute after they logout. Very confusing as the latest lot arrived about 10 minutes later.

Although we’re in the midst of the busiest season of the year, the first offer of a free listing has just arrived!

Of course the reason for this is that the gite people already have all the bookings that they want for this year so should just be starting on their marketing for next year. In practice most of them don’t seem to really get underway until September or even October but they’ll already have renewed their inprint advertising (the deadline is usually around June!).

The B&B people however are totally swamped at the moment and should stay that way until they get September out of the way so there’s not a whole lot of point in offering them discounted listings and whatnot at the moment.

In true mercernary style it’s best not to take up the 6 month free offers ’til early in the year (probably around January/February for gites, around March/April for B&B) to maximise the benefit of the free period and indeed to get a fair comparison of the free offer with other competing offers.

Anyway, we’ll probably be restarting our “junk mail” programme later in the month. Our sites are a little different though in that we are free all the time so why not sign up (B&B, self-catering or hotel) at our signup page?

Every year I send an e-mail to all the B&B and self-catering properties listed on the Our Inns websites telling the people what we’ve done with the sites during the year and the kind of improvements that we’re planning for the coming year.

Each year, I get a trickle of returned e-mails representing those properties that have been sold within the previous year. This year has been particularly sad in that almost 10% of the original people listed on the site have dropped out of the market and aren’t traceable. Now, if we charged for a listing we’d expect to have people drop out each year but the free listings that we provide just keep going.

Why do they give up on B&B (and, so far, it’s been exclusively the B&B properties)?

Well, many people come to France with rose coloured glasses courtesy of the many “moving to France” series that you get these days. In those, there are never any insurmountable problems but in real-life there are problems that you just don’t want to deal with day in day out. For instance, whilst none of the people on those series speak French (with the notable exception of Patrick & Collette of Chaos in the Castle fame), you DO need to speak French to run a B&B here (but not if you’re running a gite).

For others, it’s their first experience of dealing with paying guests on a regular basis and it’s just not their thing. Again, with rose-tinted glasses it might seem an idyillic lifestyle but in reality it’s pretty hard work.

Then there’s those that have never run a business before let alone one in France and don’t appreciate how much money is required to get a place fully operational. Others haven’t considered pricing. For instance, we’ve just heard of one more upcoming dropout who are packing it in because they were constantly full and it was just too much work yet they’re in a property which they could easily have charged almost twice as much and still been full but been able to employ someone.

Finally, some people who think they’re really committed francophiles, find that they just can’t stick life in France. Yes, it can seem the perfect lifestyle whilst on holiday but that very laid-back aspect of it which seems initially very appealing can become an annoyance when you want to get things done.

So, every year whilst we get a flow of new properties coming onto the sites we know that we’ll also see a trickle of the existing properties departing.