Booking a gite
Booking a gite or villa holiday in France (or anywhere else) can be a bit of a hit-or-miss affair, so I thought I’d offer a few practical suggestions on making sure you book the perfect holiday for yourself in the future. Sorry I forgot to write this sooner as promised. And I often use the word gite, although the same apples if you want a villa, because I know that for some people a ‘gite’ has downmarket connotations.
I assume you already know roughly which area you want to book a gite in. There are three main places where you can find your holiday rental: a brochure in a travel agent; an internet gite/villa listing site; and a search directly on the internet for the region that you want to visit. Each of these has advantages and disadvantages.
Booking a gite through a travel-agent is quick and painless to organise, and will usually have the protection offered by ATOL etc., and you can make your travel arrangements at the same time. Some of the companies represented may even have individually inspected the properties, so offering some kind of guarantee of quality.
But, most of the properties that I am aware of are not advertised through travel agents, because the mark-up on the price applied by travel agents (up to 75%) makes the property uncompetitive, and the costs of getting included in brochures is much higher than internet advertising. Also the amount of information and photographs available will usually be much less than with other forms of publicity.
So you will be paying a high price for the ease of booking the gite, and the security that the travel agent provides, and you will miss out on a great deal of choice.
The same criticisms apply to the magazines in newsagents that list rental properties.
Booking a gite directly through a listing site on the internet. There are now a lot of listing sites available on the internet (search on ‘holiday rentals France’ and many pages of results will be shown). It is quite pleasant to spend an evening in the comfort of your own home searching through these lists for your holiday. Typically the properties will have quite a few photographs, and more text about the property and area than you will find in a printed brochure.
The downside is that because there are so many properties available, it is easy to become confused by the choice. Many sites have availability shown for their properties, but often owners don’t update this availability, so you can send lots of ‘information requests’ only to find that the properties are no longer available.
Sites all have different search facilities – as an example, our gites are in northern Lot-et-Garonne, but closer to the Dordogne River than much of the Dordogne department itself. If you search on Dordogne, you will not find us, but if you search on Aquitaine (which includes Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne but also the whole region down to Biarritz and the Atlantic Coast) you will find that you are looking through properties that are hundreds of miles from where you want to go. Similarly if you want to visit the Loire Valley do you search on Centre (have you heard of Center?), or did you realise that Rocamadour, just east of the Dordogne in the Lot region, is listed as Midi-Pyrenees yet is several hours drive from the mountains? This is as much a problem for us owners of rental properties as it is for you, in search of a holiday.
Unfortunately most listing sites don’t allow links to individual websites (because they want the booking to be identified with the listing site, so we renew our booking the following year!)
Booking a gite by searching directly on the internet for properties in your chosen region. This works if you know a very specific village or town where you want to stay, but will be almost impossible if you are just looking for a nice property in a general area. It is very difficult for individual websites to rate high in the search engines – so if you look for ‘gite normandy’ for example, you will have to look through a great deal of pages before you start finding many websites for individual properties. Any on the first couple of pages will usually be owned by ‘website experts’ – not necessarily the best properties. And of course, many owners simply do not have websites for their properties.
The other issue I haven’t mentioned is the property itself. If I have a property next to a main road will I mention it in my publicity? I know someone with a beautiful gite next to a large ‘warehouse style’ garage. The pictures will all look lovely, I am sure, but would you want a holiday where lorries are pulling in and out all day?
So a key aspect is to have some communication with the owner. Telephone is good, email is fine (and much more common). Ask lots of questions. Perhaps 30% of people booking our properties ask questions – it should be more like 100%! This is not usually possible if booking through a travel agent, but is easy if booking through an internet site or booking directly.
Is the road quiet, is the pool fenced, can I smoke in bed, is the garden secluded, how far is the nearest neighbour, is there heating in September if it turns cold, is the ‘easy walk to shops’ along a dual carriageway or over a mountain, is the property near a town with all facilities, when is the pool open etc? No owner I know of will mind answering questions – quite the opposite, because we (almost all) want to have people stay who are pleasantly surprised rather than ‘secretly disappointed but too polite to say anything’.
So where does that leave you, the holiday hunter?
Well, as you might guess, I would ignore high street travel agents, because you are limiting your choice and paying extra for the privilege.
If at all possible, if you know someone else who has stayed in the region ask for their recommendations. There is nothing better than a personal recommendation, because people will only recommend somewhere if it was really good. Comments from a visitors book on an internet site is good, but of course an owner could be slightly selective or creative with these…
Then, if you know exactly where you want to stay, try searching on the internet for that place name – remember to do separate searches for ‘villa placename’, farmhouse placename, ‘gite placename’ etc because each will find different results.
Otherwise the internet listing sites are the best option. When contacting the owner ask if they have a personal website. Send queries to as many as you like – if you can choose from 10 available properties, after seeing their personal websites, so much the better.
In any event, you need to shortlist a few properties in order to compare prices. If a property seems cheap it is perhaps in an area with fewer visitors, so be sure how far you are from the attractions and places that you want to visit. You should also be sure of your own priorities – swimming pool, proximity to shops, rural isolation, childrens play area and so on and make sure your property shortlist includes these.
Last suggestion – try and book earlier if possible. If you can book your gite by October – February you will have a much wider choice. By waiting until May you might get a bargain, but it might not be the perfect property for you. (Having said that, it is true that in recent years people are booking their holidays later and later, and June requests for summer holidays are very common.)
Anyway, if the above doesn’t help ask in ‘Comments’ at the end of this and I will try to elaborate. I have deliberately avoided discussing price, because one person will want to pay £300 per week, while another will happily pay £2,000 per week, and the same principles apply.
And I’m sure I’m allowed my own publicity here (?) – our gites are at Gites Villereal and of course they exceed all possible expectations at a ridiculously low price, and the answer to any questions you have is ‘yes’ (except smoking in bed)!