What is everyone looking at

I hear a lot of questions about how well holidays in France are booking this year, and I know that while some rental properties are as booked as usual, others have significantly less bookings than they would expect for the time of year. So the big question is, will the whole of France this summer resemble an abandoned holiday camp, with beaches empty of children and swimming pools slowly becoming stagnant green ponds, or will it be business as usual?

I think it is certainly true that people in the UK have booked less holidays than usual so far this year – perhaps with the intention of booking later, or perhaps to not bother at all during 2009, I don’t know. Probably no one knows. Whatever, I do know from many gite owners and holiday companies that the year has had a slow start, which is no big surprise.

We also hear about the collapse in property sales and the expat exodus. No one could possibly afford to live in France given the fall in the pound, and expats are leaving in the droves, in an effort to join the end of the unemployment lines before they get too long. We see no evidence for this ourselves but it’s what the papers have reported.

All this accepted wisdom is very interesting…but is it actually true?

I have been looking through our site visitor statistics compared with previous months and with the same time in 2008 and it is clear that:

• at least as many people are looking at gites and holidays as would be expected for the time of year
• the number of people looking at property for sale in France does not appear to have fallen

We hear a similar story from people who have visited the UK recently – we hear on the news that spending has ground to a complete standstill, while people who come back from a trip to the UK tell us the shops still seem to be as busy as ever.  So what’s happening? What is everyone up to? There seem to be two possible explanations.

The first is that everyone is still making plans to have holidays in France and even buy their dream property in France but think they’d best hold off for a month or two to see how things are looking before they commit themselves.

The second possibility is that everyone is so addicted to spending money that going to the shops and looking on the internet for things to buy are activities in themselves, even if no money is actually going to get spent.

The second option is too sad to believe, so I hope the first explanation is right, that a lot of people are waiting for the slightest sign that things aren’t really so bad so that they can get on and book their annual holiday / sell up and move to France. OK so there is a chance you will actually be the only tourist on the beach in Nice in August, and your holiday will be ruined by the absence of overcrowding and traffic jams, but it’s a pretty small chance.

Which also suggests that rental owners don’t need to panic quite yet that their gites will sit idle over the summer, and that given just a little bit of good news things could perhaps return to something like normality quite easily. We’ll keep our fingers crossed, because I can’t imagine what a terrible ’winter of discontent’ might descend on the UK if people don’t even manage to get their annual two weeks in the sunshine.