No we haven’t.
You haven’t what?
You (or the agent you use) don’t have an agreement of any sort with your clients? How odd!
Or you have never had difficult clients? I seem to recall your gîte is (was? ) marketed only a very small audience for a short period each year. So perhaps managed to avoid them which was a stroke of luck for you 
Anyway my comment was directed at guruengineer!
We haven’t ever had anyone who has complained, or brought an animal they never mentioned.
We have only ever had one obese woman who broke the loo.
Everyone else has been delighted with what we have provided.
Wouldn’t a valid French response be to make an extra charge for each of those things?
Getting guests to agree to your contract is the easy bit, making them stick to what it says in the contract is often far more difficult. Today’s guests know that owners don’t want bad reviews so push things to the limit (and sometimes beyond) because they can get away with it, owners grin and bear it and can’t wait for the season to end.
Running or managing gites is bloody hard work, anyone who doesn’t agree clearly hasn’t done either.
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People are finding that those who usually go abroad on all in holidays are complaining that things are different now in UK, especially with the shortage of staff nearly sector is experiencing.
They are writing nasty reviews on Tripadvisor, which are not warranted.
And so legitimising the behaviour so they continue to do this to future hosts? Basically allowing them to think it doesn’t matter what the contract says as they can just throw a bit of money and the problem will go away.
If someone contacts us in advance - even if the same day - we ask for a supplement. If they arrive with no warning the extra guest(s) is/are told to go away. So we manage it in our own way, and no doubt so does everyone else who ends up with badly brought up clients.
You are lucky. It rarely happens to us, but has happened. And is nothing to do with whether people are delighted by what we provide or not - it’s a matter of their character, not ours.
Since 2007 (when we started managing rentals) we have looked after 350+ groups of varying sizes and nationalities, the vast majority have given us no trouble and have treated the properties with respect. However, I wish we had kept a written record of the chaos that some guests have caused over the years and published it as a warning to what can go wrong.
These are just a few of things we’ve had to deal with -
Many smashed windows, demolished stone gate pillar, slashed pool liners, damaged electric canopy (repair cost was 3.5K), missing and injured guests, guests that refused to leave, incoming guests that arrived at 10.00 am before we could even get into the house to clean, numerous complaints from neighbours over noise etc.
We’ve probably had the same numbers, possibly more. The three worst things all involved stairs. One english woman was, we think, thrown down - turned out lots if booze and class 1 were involved. She ended up having to be airlifted to limoges for a serious head injury. One very obese German woman managed to fall down, it took 2 stretchers and 6 pompiers and me to get her into the ambulance. 3rd was another english woman who managed to fall up the stairs, breaking nose, cheek bone and eye socket, large amounts of red…
Only have french guests now, normally as good as gold, but unannounced pets piss me off
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Generally yes, much more civilised, and certainly drink more sensibly than the English so less prone to falling over.
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Wow. Was this across all nationalities and family situation of guests?
Ahhh… now seen the intervening comments
We found French guests always cleaned up before leaving the gite, and even folded the sheets, so there was hardly anything to do. They expected to do the cleaning. And the children were usually well trained to help. Of all the nationalities we had, Americans were the messiest and laziest. Not ready at the appointed hour for leaving, still having breakfast, crumbs everywhere, washing up half done.
We probably have 90% French/Dutch/Belgian guests with the Brits mainly being in the area to attend weddings at a local chateau.
No dramas or damages above the odd broken wine glass, but then we do ask for a not insignificant security deposit.
We always spoke to our guests before their arrival, making contact gives you an idea of who is about to stay with you.
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Hi there.
Seem to have poked the bear there unintentionally. I interpreted your post as anything I MUST have, not anything I should provide.
No I have not got a gite at the moment we have 3 rooms and a holiday cottage. Constructing two Gites next year.
Yes its a challenge. My parents were hoteliers, had two hotels on the South east coast of Spain so we dealt with all of Europe, practically no brits at all. I spent 10 years working in the Trade before packing it in and moved into Engineering. Now I am back in the Accomodation trade again.
Looking at some of the comments I would agree that in my expereicnce the French can be one of the most demanding clients. Even way back it, was always the Noise and Blackout curtains so no change there, they used to complain about the noise from the Meditaranaen lapping against the shore and the pebbles moving on the beach which you could feel through the floor at night when all was quiet. I liked it but …We always found the French liked good food and to go out on mini tours in their cars. SO we always lined up loads of trips / Leaflets to go up into the mountains to restaurants with Authentic food. Busy holidays rather than most of the Nations who just wanted to Go to the beach, eat, go out all night and sleep, rinse and repeat.
We did have some french morocans who arrived one night. Booked a twin room and then like 12 of them got out of this big merc van and slept in the room and on the balcony, bloody cheek. But we did get quite a bit of spin off business. Never fell for that one again.
Heres a suggetion. Why dont you do a checklist that you can send out to people, like a rider for a band this is whats here do you need anything else in particular different headings for Kitchen, Bathroom , pets etc. Then if they turn up you can always say you asked the questions. Extras charge for them.
Somebody will always want somthing else. Laundry wise we always had 3 of everything for each room. I spare one on in the room and one in the wash. Overnights were the worst if you had like 35 rooms of 1 nights. hell of a wash day…
I think your comments should have been directed at me, not Jane, since she is the one offering me advice.
I’ve been very happily providing 5-star service to my English guests for several years now and I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that French guests specifically need that English don’t.
In fact all went very well and I’ve another set of 5 stars and a review in French. 
So again, thanks to those of you who appreciated I was looking for that bit of extra knowledge rather than a general discussion as to how to run a gite - which certainly Jane doesn’t need!
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I have been told by French guests that whilst a Nespresso machine is OK a filter coffee machine is much better.
We are eco so no pods…instead offer coffee press, a Bialetti and a filter jug. No-one has complained!
We provide a detailed inventory in two languages.
We’ve had a couple of odd questions from international guests -
French - where is the madeleine cake tin?
German - where are the pasta bowls?
Daft complaints from a Brit couple staying at one particular property where a detailed resume of the facilities on offer etc is sent to all prospective renters -
‘the bar is too far away to walk to’. Our reply - ‘the bar has always been that distance from the house’.
‘the pool is too deep’. Our reply - ‘the pool hasn’t been made deeper since you booked’.
This particular property always seemed to attract ‘nutters’, we nicknamed one family ‘the giants’ as we had never seen such tall people, the mother was the shortest at 6ft 1 whilst the father and all three teenage children were so tall their feet dangled over the edge of the beds.
Were they Dutch?