Many of us are providing holiday homes and hotels etc…and everything which makes a holiday happen, So what hope do we have for 2021 and what ideas can be put in place to stimulate this market and generate income.
We have bookings already for next year…I think it might be a bumper year as people will be reluctant to get on planes (if indeed there are many planes left!). We are going to refresh our website, put more on it about cleaning etc, but not do much else for the minute.
Our biggest problem is that now the region is Bourgogne Franche-Comté it is so huge that the tourist offices promotion of the region is useless as it is so general. The region goes from high mountains virtually to the edge of Paris…
@barbara_deane1
I’ve no idea what will happen next year (who does… ) but I’m wondering how you market/describe your rental properties…
Friends trawled the web, reading thoroughly the descriptions on each gite/ hotel site…
They found one which went into particular length about the various precautions etc they hadput in place… as well as what they expected/demanded of their guests. It gave them confidence… to give it a whirl.
They found it to be a superbly “safe” small hotel and have stayed their twice already this year.
they have been so impressed by the standards of care and safety… re covid… and everything else… that they are recommending it to everyone who wants a break, once restrictions are lifted/eased…
anyway… to get back to the Thread… might be a good idea to really go into detail about the cleaning/whatever you have put in by way of anti-covid stuff…
I reckon folk will choose the place where they feel confident of the best chance of an enjoyable “safe” holiday… I know I would. 
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Thinking about it further, it occurs to me that many of the people on here may target the British market. We don’t, so have had a fairly ok year in the end.
So maybe now is the time to change track and market to a Francophone audience?
We were somewhat horrified by the gîte we have just stayed in in the south because everything was in English. Including a big sign outside saying Private Parking, which we found disrespectful to local people. We were their second set of clients for the year, which suggests they don’t attract French people.
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Aiming at folk living in France… would seem a good idea… I reckon… 
It’s a big enough country for anywhere to be considered a “foreign” holiday… 
but giving folk the comfort of knowing what is what…
I have no experience of such things but, if I had a gite etc to sell I would concentrate on my departement and all it had to offer, along with the nearest adjoining ones, rather than a massive region. Ours stretches from the Spanish border to almost Clermont Ferrand in the east and Angers in the north.
And yes, I would not assume my intended market is only Anglo.
Yes make sure that all is clean and sanitised incl kids toys
Of course this info should feature in the marketing but surely
this is part and parcel of operating a decent property#emphasized text which is related to a
good organisation . Does AirB and B offer a certain standard which is acceptable in
these difficult times.
Sorry but keyboard trouble.
Unable to work it out. So no question marks.
having watched the changeover at a local AirBnB this year… I would not want to use that service.
I would prefer somewhere the Owner was present… or Management …
and that clear guidelines were stated as ton how guests were expected to behave and use equipment/whatever. ie not simply relying on the changoever clean/sanitation
Our friends were impressed when staff swooped on any guest not following the guidelines… made folk feel safe to see such things being enforced…
Our market is the UK and these days almost entirely repeat business. And we are pretty fully booked for '21 because everyone postponed from '20. Not sure we will see them. 
This year, we could have sold August eight times over to French and Dutch desperate to get away at the last minute. So I’m not panicking yet.
We never do bookings back to back and always leave a week between. Even more important in these times and I expect concerns about hygiene / cleanliness to continue. Reviews are essential, because they are what gives credibility - it’s not me saying how clean my place is, but my guests.
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Absolutely… recommendations are so important… (our friends are twitchy about covid, so if they tell us a place is good… it is very good… )
good luck…
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We have lots of English clients, mainly because we bought our gites business as a going concern, so inherited its UK agent (which has in fact now gone bust). Also partly because of geography - we are only an hour from the north coast ferry ports. We also always have some Irish, Scandinavian, French and occasionally other nationalities - but we find we have lots of enquiries from French people too late - the English etc tend to book much earlier.
We are already pretty full next year - certainly over the peak weeks - for the simple reason that the guests that couldn’t come this year postponed to next.
Sue how do you manage
4 weeks in aug and you only fill 2
The high yielding month is depleated
yes but will they be able to come in 2021
i too have reservations for 2021 but my agent is at liberty to accept Covid related cancellations.
Because I run it as what people who are making a living out of gites would call a “hobby gite”.
When we first moved here I said I would never have a gite. Then I realised that friends were staying and I was washing / cleaning / entertaining them and not making any money - so effectively I was running a gite for free.
Then the value of the pound crashed and what had been a nice thing to offer friends suddenly became something that could at least pay for itself and might also make a bit of money. And that’s what it’s been for the last seven years.
I realise we are lucky, we have our pensions and so don’t have to fill the gite week in week out. My two weeks in August gross about £1700, so that for me is just fine.
In the present scenario that empty week has been vital for me, to protect us and protect our guests. I don’t go into the cottage for 2-3 days and doing a deep clean takes a couple of days - if the temperature is in the high 30s it’s also good to be able to work early morning and late evening and not kill myself in the process.
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What one of our rental clients has done for next year is expand their ‘rental season’ so they have made their house available from the 1st of April to the 31st of October and hope by doing that they’ll re-coup some of this year’s losses.
How interesting. With us it is the reverse. We tend to get a lot of French bookings in the first weeks in January, and the website hits show much more activity earlier from francophone countries. Maybe it’s location as we are a long way from the UK and you are not.
And for Barbara, we don’t use AirBnB but I know they sent all their host copious cleaning instructions.
I agree with Geoff. @Geof_Cox Most of my English repeats are booking almost before they’ve left. They know how quickly gites get booked up during the high season and if they are restricted to school holidays and want their pick, by January it’s too late.
I’m keeping mine open right through to Christmas. We’ll see.
We are open all year, except when we go on holiday. And for once had bookings through November! More cancellations and returned deposits…