La Rochelle Tourist Office
A tourist office works best when it is located near the most popular part of a town.
Failing that, signposts indicating how to find the tourist office are a good idea. Putting it off the beaten track and not indicating how to find it is a bit counter-productive, don’t you think? (If you are looking for it, it is near the Aquarium.)
Charging for tourist information, even just 20 cents, is just plain greedy.
Especially when most, perhaps even all, of the attractions listed have paid admission, and almost all pages in the brochure are given over to listings of hotels etc. It’s better to charge the attractions themselves for advertising, or charge all businesses in the town a little tax to pay for attracting tourists to the town.
Welcome to the 21st century
Many businesses and attractions in the tourist literature include website addresses. Many visitors need internet access. So why not tell visitors how we can access all these useful websites? Does La Rochelle have public WiFi zones and internet cafes? If yes where are they? If not it should have, and should publicise them!
I eventually found a small bar with WiFi access (indicated only by a tiny sticker on the door), but only by chance.
Internet, and information about how to access it, should be easily available.
Visitors come from all over the world
Some but not all of the tourist information signs around the town were available in English as well as French. They should all be in at least those two languages, preferably other languages as well. Yes I am aware this is France but if a significant part of your target audience doesn’t speak or read French you need to cater to them as well.
Chill out and smile
When I was in the La Rochelle tourist office a small boy was rolling around on the end of one of the chairs while his parents were in the queue. One of the officials shouted at the boy a couple of times then went charging over to pull the boy off the chair and tell him it was not an ‘espece de jeux’.
Sorry dudes, you’re supposed to smile and be helpful, you represent the town – leave other peoples children to their parents unless they are being disruptive or dangerous (the boy was being neither).
Agreed. The La Rochelle tourist office are utterly useless and rude to boot. We went in once, explained that we were running a gite business in the area and could they possibly provide us with information packs appropriate to a selection of the most popular sites for our guests.
The answer?
“We’re not here to help promote your business for you!”
Happily there are some more helpful ones around.
The Vendee based tourism offices are perhaps the best I’ve come across in the country, with loads of information, helpful staff, are always happy to post information, and generally seem to be extremely well run.
But yes La Rochelle tourist information centre was a sorry disappointment (unlike the town itself).
I agree that the tourist office itself is not the best, but I have had superlative service from one of the staff, Sophie.
When we were on a day trip to La Rochelle I saw a picture in the window of a shop which was closed. I was unable to go back the next day as we were en route back to England, & I did not think to write down the name of the shop
I emailed the tourist office with the details, and Sophie went into the town, tracked down the picture & is sending it to me.
Wonderful!
Wow, that is impressive! Full marks to Sophie!
I had very good service at the tourist office this summer. Very helpful in directing me to a great bike hire shop – much cheaper than the yellow bikes and great service.
There’s an internet cafe in the area opposite one of the ports behind and to the side of the mediatheque. Again very helpful staff.