Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Of the hundreds of people who have stayed with us over the course of this year, only two or three have paid using the Nationwide credit card which is crazy as they’re the only place that doesn’t charge to use your cards overseas.

Perhaps more crazy though is that of the dozen or so couples who live in Spain and have used us as a pitstop on their way to/from the UK, only one used a Nationwide card as they’re spending quite a considerable chunk of their income on bank charges. Quite how much is staggering. For example, a friend who lives in Brussels let drop once that he just used his Halifax card in the same way that he had done when living in the UK ie he would lift £20 or £30 each time he needed some money and likewise when he was paying for the groceries or whatever.

Most people read the bit in the credit/debit card charging information that says “currency exchange 2.75%” and figure that he wouldn’t have run up much of a bill. However, there is a transaction charge on all overseas use of the card of, at that time, £2 (and I gather it’s now £3) PLUS the 2.75% foreign exchange charge. So, that £20 cost him £2.55 ie 12.75% and, yes, he was paying around 12% of his entire income each month on bank charges!!

Clearly it’s quite different if you’re living abroad vs going on holiday but that minimum charge soon mounts up if you lift small amounts of cash. Whilst it’s much better to use the Nationwide card and pay nothing, if you are using a fee charging card you should lift a minimum of £100 or so each time and thereby reduce your costs to 4.25% to 4.75% depending on your bank and, whenever possible, use your credit card for purchases rather than making cash withdrawals.

See our guide at holiday money for more information.

In that insurance companies operate across national boundaries, you’d expect that the standards they adhere to would be international ones. After all, it would be too complicated to run with one set of rules in one country and a totally different one in another, wouldn’t it?

You might think that, but it ain’t so in France.

In France, once you’ve signed up for car insurance with one company it’s not possible to shop around each year as you’d do elsewhere in Europe because to change your insurance company, you must cancel your existing insurance by recorded delivery letter at least two months before your renewal date. However, as you might expect that’s before they’ve told you what it’s going to cost ie you’ve nothing to compare it against the price another company might quote.

We on the other hand are in the “fortunate” position that our previous car was wrecked and therefore could go into another insurance company for the quote. We’re also in the unusual position of knowing what the renewal premium would have been for the little car pictured and that our new and somewhat larger car was around EUR 200 cheaper to insure!

Not that you can totally walk away from the old company of course. You obviously need something to say what the discount you’re entitled to is and that’s what we’re trying to get now with, so far, no success.

What about the payout from GAN for the old car? We were wondering about that too. The car accident happened on May 23rd yet we still have had nothing from them which is why we’re now with a different company.

One odd thing in this Internet age is that it’s becoming more and more common for people to phone up for a booking rather than doing it online.

Now, we always expected that from the French as, until fairly recently, they just didn’t trust the Internet and certainly didn’t trust it with their debit card details. However, recently it’s becoming rather common among the English and Spanish. Why, I don’t know, but there you are.

In summertime it’s something of a nuisance as it can be quite difficult to reconcile phone bookings with online availability without ending up with double bookings. In fact, we often need to confirm that rooms remain available before saying OK to people on the phone as bookings come in at a fair rate at peak times in the Summer.

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.

It might sound like a silly question but what you’re selling at the moment might not be what people think you’re selling.

For example, we consider our place a hotel/restaurant ie a place that has accommodation that you can stay in plus a restaurant that you can eat in. However, we have had people staying who consider it a B&B and others who consider it a hostel. Someone today even let it drop that it’s a pub-restaurant which, argueably, is exactly what an inn is.

Those differences should, of course, be matched with corresponding marketing campaigns as there are at least four different types of people who would consider staying or eating with us:

1. As a hotel/restaurant, we should expect to have a fairly high proportion of overnight bookings and individual stand-alone meals sold;
2. As a B&B the expectation is that the owners are there to chat to the guests over meals;
3. As a hostel, it should be cheap with no limits on the number of people per room and perhaps with cooking facilities for the guests (none of which we provide!); and
4. As a pub we should provide “pub grub” at lunchtime and a bar in the evenings (neither of which we currently provide, though we’ve considered them).

There are entirely different ranges of websites that we should be listed on to match each of those views of our product. We’ve largely got the hotel side covered, but don’t run to a lot of B&B listings really. As for hostels? Well, the main problem we find is that hostels are “supposed” to be in the city and we’re not which makes for a divergence in expectations compared to reality that isn’t good.

If you want to avoid unpleasant surprises on the feedback front, it’s best to ensure that what you’re selling is the same as what people think they’re buying!