Foreign Perspectives

Winter is the time when we get around to looking in detail at our various sites and so it was only yesterday that we noticed that one of them wasn’t nearly so complete as it could be.

An easy thing to fix and as from this afternoon our Holiday Rental Homes site now lists all the properties that it should have been listing all along. The effect of this is that the site should have a much greater profile than it did before with hundreds of new pages under it’s wing.

Whether it’ll make any difference with the search engines is something that we’ll just have to wait and see.

One of the questions that’s in the back of our minds at the moment is “where should we go after here?” and the answer is far from simple.

Our first complication is that since we’re selling both a business and a home at the same time and likely to be moving to another country, the synchronisation of the move will be quite complex. Consequently, our current thinking is that the bulk of our possessions will go to storage somewhere whilst we rent an interim home elsewhere. To simplify our lives tax-wise, it’s probably going to be a little easier if the interim spot isn’t in France as that’ll create a clean-ish break from the French tax system sooner than if our interim spot were in France.

With the sedate pace of French property sales, we’d have anything from three to six months from the “I’ll take it” until the cheque clears in our bank account so there should be lots of time to arrange that interim move. In fact, probably enough to skip the interim stage but synchronising a sale in France with a purchase elsewhere would be next to impossible hence the interim stage.

Where to go after that though? Whilst we’ve not yet settled on a single spot, a number of requirements are already apparent:

1. We’d like the kids to grow up english speaking;
2. We want a country that is broadly pro-business.

The first point doesn’t actually rule out non-english speaking countries as you might think as there are many countries with bilingual schools and in fact the possibility of a bilingual education would be quite a plus point for us.

We’re saying pro-business basically because we’ve experienced a broadly anti-business environment over the last four years and it makes life a lot more difficult at every stage of running a business. France is changing, but not quickly enough for us.

I’m sure that we’ll add many more requirements over the months to come!

People seem to be moving online in droves in search of holiday accommodation if the stats on my own accommodation listings sites are anything to go by.

Whilst ordinarily, I expect to have to upgrade the hosting for the collection of sites once a year, I’ve already had to upgrade it three times since Christmas such is the rush of people looking around for summer holiday accommodation. The increase in traffic from December looks like coming out around eight fold which is a major jump by any standards.

Whilst financially it’s no problem in that hosting costs have dropped like a stone in recent years, technically it’s heralding a problem that may arise this summer, somewhat ahead of my expectations. That problem is that I’ve only one more upgrade that I can do before I have to move from a shared hosting plan to a VPS hosting plan that essentially provides me with my own virtual server (actually shared by around four others).

Plus points of that upgrade are that it will give me the extra bandwidth that I’ll be needing by then and that the websites should run a lot faster but on the downside it costs about five times the price of the service that I’ll be using just prior to it.

Once you’re in France for a while, chances are that you’ll come across a few “experts” that is somebody doing something or other that comes with the title of “expert”.

In fact, the meaning is somewhat different to the english word and equates to something along the lines of “senior” so that you find “Expert Comptables” ie Senior Accountants and so on. However, whilst the meaning doesn’t translate across to the word “expert” in english, in practice it seems to be taken as meaning that in many instances ie that the “expert” can’t possibly be wrong because they are an expert.

Even those who don’t regale under the title of “expert” in their profession are often taken to be essentially infallable when working in their field. So, for example, the assumption is that whatever comes out of an official channel is bound to be correct is quite common and therefore not to be questioned. Perhaps our own accountant provides the best example of this practice. In common with everyone else in France starting a business she received a bill from the social security people for around 3000‚€ when she started her consultancy business and in common with almost everyone else she paid it. In fact, it’s not actually necessary to pay it as it’s based on an estimate of what you might earn in your first year of business and if you tell them the true figure then their demand for payment drops around 90%.

Perhaps the worst example of this is in the area of estimating the value of a car after an accident. Obviously there can be a lot of uncertainty in any estimate as no two cars will have been used identically of course. Yet, the expert accepts no uncertainty: his price is the only price and must be correct because he is the expert. Except that, naturally, even experts make mistakes.

So be wary of the “experts” in France for they seem to believe that their expertise is carved in stone and unquestionably correct. Even when it’s wrong.

As we’re edging into the main booking season for the summer, the number of travel advertisements is increasing quite dramatically as you’ve probably noticed.

Although the world is obviously pretty much the same as it was last year, the emphasis on particular holiday destinations seems to change from year to year. So far this year, the emphasis seems to be split between Costa Rica, Canada and Carribbean cruises which are three very different options.

At first glance Costa Rica seems to be primarily an ecotourism destination with rain forests, exotic animals and so on. However, whilst making a point of ecotourism the tourist infrastructure in other areas has been built up substantially in recent years and you now have a very complete offering under most types of tourist activities.

Canada is, for the moment, concentrating on luxury ski vacations both around British Columbia at the west and Quebec in the east. Luxury seems to be the common theme for both sides of Canada with a lot of emphasis on personal service and fantastic meals.

The Carribbean cruises being pushed this year are also generally at the luxury end of the market but emphasising the discounts available from a number of cruise lines. Very substantial discounts too in some cases, notably from SilverSea which is very much a personal service cruise line.

Of course, where they want you to go will probably change as we move further into the year. For one thing, the Canadian ski resorts will be dropping out from around April/May as the snow starts to melt although those areas are very attractive in the summer too.