Living - French B&B and Gite Marketing

If you’re intending to move to France to set up a French B&B or gite business, you’ve probably already considered how and where you might advertise your holiday property. If you’ve already bought your dream home and are in the process of setting up your holiday accommodation business, you’ve probably already made your advertising decisions after a fair amount of research into the possible options.

But before your phone starts ringing with potential clients, it might be worth taking a good look at the sort of holiday you’re actually going to be offering your holidaymakers. What will set you apart from the other B&Bs or gîtes in your area? Conversely, what could dissuade potential clients from booking your property? The answers to these two questions are essential when putting together your adverts and fundamental to the success (or failure) of your business.

Although analysing your business may sound a little overthe- top for gîtes or a B&B, it’s worth emphasising that the process of setting up and running such a business in France has become decidedly more serious in recent years.

Gone are the days when you could whitewash the walls of an adjacent barn, furnish it with your unwanted furniture and stick a one-photo advert in a holiday brochure. Today’s holidaymakers tend to want quality furniture and modern equipment in a spotlessly clean property – and even if they’ve found your advert in a published brochure, they’ll want to visit your own website for more detailed information, as well as look at some photos.

Most important of all, they’ll want to feel confident about handing a large cheque over before they’ve even met you. If they can see that you’re taking all aspects of your business seriously, they’ll worry less about parting with their money.

Showing potential clients that they can trust you is about much more than just creating a good advert for your property, however. It’s about your overall marketing strategy, of which advertising is just one element. People often believe marketing is just another name for advertising, but it actually covers much wider aspects of your holiday business, such as where your property’s located, what sort of holidays you offer, how much your holidays cost and how people can find out about them.

Four steps to better marketing
In a nutshell, you need to consider the ‘Four Ps’ – place, product, price and promotion. In management speak, this is called the ‘marketing mix’ and the idea is to get the right mix to best suit your business.

“But hang on a minute,” I can hear you say, “we’re moving to France to escape the rat race – not to recreate it in an idyllic, rural setting.We’re setting up a small business, not a multimillion pound corporation.” Of course this is true, but unless you’re a millionaire already – or have a sizeable, regular income from another source – your business is going to need to be as successful as possible and striving to get the best marketing mix will almost certainly do that.

Now more than ever, there’s little room for complacency, especially if you need to earn a living from your gîtes or B&B. The market has become so competitive that established businesses are having to work much harder for their bookings, especially in the more popular areas of France which have become saturated with holiday accommodation.

By continually examining your marketing mix, even successful established businesses may discover they can improve or expand their services or facilities to generate more bookings. Looking at what your competitors offer may also inspire you to improve, as well as asking for feedback from your clients.

Make changes that work
Working out where to make such changes or improvements is where the marketing mix comes in, providing a structured framework for analysing various aspects of your business. Although you cannot change your location unless you’re still in the process of deciding where to buy your property, you are obviously in complete control of the type of holidays you offer (product), your holiday tariff (price) and where you advertise (promotion). Improvements and changes do have to be cost effective, however, because if holidaymakers are unlikely to notice or appreciate them, the expense of implementing them may outweigh any possible increase in bookings, especially from repeat clients.

Of course, some changes to your business may be forced upon you. Health and safety has become a major issue for holiday property owners over the last 15 years, with more and more holidaymakers happy to complain if a problem arises. Swimming pool safety regulations and pool water hygiene standards also have to be complied with, with hefty fines for pool owners who fail to conform to the legislation.

If you’re interested in seeing how the marketing mix might possibly apply to your own gîte or B&B business, then join me in the coming months as we discuss each of the four elements in much greater detail. Even if you already have an established, successful holiday business, try applying the marketing theory to your own enterprise and see how much is relevant to a small B&B or gîte business in practice.

Philip Kotler wrote: “Marketing takes a day to learn”, so you won’t need to know any of the marketing jargon to analyse your business. He also wrote “unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master” – but that shouldn’t put you off doing the best you can for your business because marketing really does matter.

• Emma Ellis runs LuzMedia & LetSites with husband Charlie. www.letsites.com email: info@letsites.com

• Richard and Jane Platts: www.laboriehautedordogne.com

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