This latest study carried out by Guest and Strategy questioned almost 500 gîte and b&B owners in France earlier this year. Apparently over half of you have no marketing strategy, almost half have a turnover of between €5,000 and €15,000 and most businesses will only become viable after a few years of trading.
There are a few gems and some surprising findings, so how does your business compare?
Seems like the market is split into those that have bought a house, find they have a couple of rooms to hire out, and are happy just to have a bit of extra income. These are the ones who are probably not too bothered about a marketing plan nor are they bothered about having their rooms rated. Then there are the others, usually younger, who buy a property with the express design to let out gites/chambres d'hotes and they are far more aggressive marketeers and likely spend a good deal of time and money upgrading their rooms to achieve higher room rates. Horses for courses, non?
Interesting.
You have to know your place in the market.
I have to say that the number of average properies outways the special places.
It is easy to get lost in the crowd.
But special means spending money on keeping up the satndard and finding ways
to reach the people who respect special.
Takes a few years to get to that point sometimes.
Hi Danny, and these are interesting stats. Exactly what I found when doing my research last year. It's very sad, that B&B owners work so hard for so little money, because they are running "hobby" businesses instead of professional businesses. Marketing strategy? What's that? Is the answer I'm often given. First, know who you want to serve - your ideal guest, set your website up to attract those guests using language they understand, make it easy for them to find you and book (onsite online booking is essential) and then add value, add value and ask for reviews and referrals. It's not rocket science but hardly anyone in the B&B world does it.
Thanks for posting this Danny, I'm interested to hear what others think :-)