Foreign Perspectives

Barcelona extends for quite a bit and it’s very easy to get lost in the city. Net effect is that, despite numerous visits, our navigation within the city is dreadful so we were very surprised when we managed to arrive in the Rambla area with no wrong turns along the way.

We started off with lunch in El Corte Ingles (a Spanish version of Marks & Spencer). The view from their top-floor restaurant is spectacular as you can see. Unfortunately the prices for the less than brilliant food is equally spectacular. The portions are very large though.

Our next stop was the Rambla, of which more in a later posting.

One thing that I was particularly looking for was a large but carryable Spanish/English dictionary. The snag is that Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and so a lot of the books shops are Catalan, so lots of Catalan/English and Catalan/Spanish dictionaries but it was quite a while before we found a bookshop with Spanish books. Although, you’d think that the selection of Spanish/English dictionaries would be as large in Spain as it is in the UK, in fact it’s much smaller and the dictionaries are, on the whole, more expensive for comparable quality. The sole exception to this, at least in the bookshop that I looked in, was the Collins dictionary which is pretty much the same price (allowing for the difference in currency) and even adds a version of the dictionary on CD which isn’t available in the version of the book on sale in the UK. They change the name of the dictionary so the full Collins dictionary is called Universal in Spain, the Concise edition is called Master but otherwise appears to be identical.

Normally in Spain, car park prices are pretty low but that’s definitely not the case in central Barcelona where the prices are comparable to those in London so do check the prices if you’re planning on parking all day.

Barcelona is spread out quite a bit with a number of separate centres, but if you’re thinking of a short break to Barcelona, you’d not go far wrong basing yourself in the Rambla area.

Patrick and Collette were both city lawyers so they’re clearly not stupid. Yet, so far, we’ve seen all of two actual attempts at marketing their property, neither of which seems more than vaguely appropriate.

Baby Goes 2 (Baby Goes 2 from the first series had a truly dreadful website back then (much improved since) which simply wasn’t up to the job ie not exactly the kind of place that you’d ordinarily have bothered to attempt to list a holiday property with. Sawdays from the second series is much more established but in the guidebook market which has been declining rapidly in recent years as the internet bookings increase; a last attempt to retain a grip on the listings market perhaps? Both of them seemed to me to be much more interested in promoting themselves than in promoting Chateau Ribagnac.

Not that it really matters in the case of Chateau Ribagnac. With the effort that Patrick and Collette put into keeping their castle in the public view through TV and magazine articles, it scarcely matters whether or not they do any marketing of the type that the rest of us need to do for our places.

But there are other non-TV backed chateaux and castles out there. Consider Le Castel in Normandy, Chateau de Gurat and Chateau les Peaux. All three have prices under half of those of Chateau Ribagnac. How come? Are they naff castles or something? No, just that they don’t have the benefit of the enormous publicity that Patrick and Collette generate.

Publicity and marketing are what it’s all about of course. The more you have, the higher the prices you can get because the majority of people don’t shop around that much. Chateau Ribagnac has the added advantage that it’s been on TV which a number of people out there are quite prepared to pay extra for: just think for EUR 200 or so you get to talk to Patrick all night and have a nice meal thrown in too. OK, not everyone can pick up the “TV premium” but you can probably add at least a few euro to your prices with that little bit more marketing.

So if you want a few more euro next year, now is the time to get started on ramping up your marketing for the new year. Why not make a start with Our Inns?

For a start, the actual holiday is November 1st (All Saints Day) when just about everything in France closes, much to the surprise of foreigners who are more used to Halloween being just for the kids and being the day before.

Secondly, it’s not really a French traditional holiday and they haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. Imported from America (no doubt to the disgust of a number of the French), there are numerous outfits for the kids and, of course, the usual Halloween goodies seen elsewhere. On the other hand, they may well have the outfits and troup round the houses but haven’t worked out a proper translation of “trick or treat” and therefore just go round the streets calling out for “bon bons” (sweets). The householders, for the most part haven’t got the hang of it either so the vast majority of houses remain closed and it’s noticeable that the groups of kids are very selective in the houses that they call on.

Anyway, if you’re on holiday here around Halloween, don’t forget to buy your petrol etc. on the 31st of October and wonder at the spread of an American holiday to France.

Things were working out quite well with them but the girl that had been specifically recommended to us left the accountancy firm late last year. As she spoke quite fluent English and knew how accountancy worked in the UK, the firm had used her to attract a lot of English speaking clients.

Unfortunately, when she left they found themselves with a whole lot of English speaking clients of which the majority don’t have good enough French to be able to use a normal French accountant. They in turn don’t speak good enough English to be able to deal with them properly either. Net effect? Well it seems that they decided not to bother doing anything with the clients that she had brought to the firm.

We only found this out last week after we received what is now a growing pile of penalty notices from various organisations due to our books not being done and called them to see why these were arriving.

Anyway, after being told that “this firm is in a bad way”, we’re now looking for yet another accountant.

As with leaving the last accountants, it should be “interesting” to leave this lot. We already have penalty charges which exceed the bill that they sent us recently so I’ll be forwarding a bill to them.