Where are you going on holiday?
Looking at the statistics for our gites in France section I can get a reasonably good idea of which regions of France people are looking at the most - which also tells us whether you are going to end up squeezed in a traffic jam and queueing an hour for an ice-cream…or whether you will be all alone on deserted streets.
So without further ado, these are the ‘popularity ratings’ for regions of France 2008. These figures are based on the last 250,000 page views in that section of the site - so hopefully enough to give a reasonable idea of the popularity of a region.
- Provence
- Languedoc
- Brittany
- Normandy
- Dordogne
- Atlantic coast
- Loire Valley
- Champagne
- Midi-Pyrenees
- Poitou-Charentes
- Burgundy
- Auvergne
- Alsace
- Vendee
- Corsica
So good news if you are off to Auvergne, bad news if Nice is top of your list! The figures are also focussed on native English speakers (since the site is in Engish). So somewhere like Corsica might well still be crowded with French and Italians, likewise the Vendee beaches are said to be very popular with French holidaymakers.
I’m quite surprised by Languedoc doing so well, perhaps it is because I classify the region as ’south-east France’ and people trying to avoid the crowds of Provence still want the Mediterranean sunshine?
I know that some of these are ‘regions’ and some are ‘departments’ - so it is hardly a surprise that Brittany has more ‘popularity’ than Vendee. Unfortunately I don’t have the time or the willpower to calculate ‘number of gites booked divided by the size of the region’ which would tell you whether it will be really crowded or not.
Holidays in France, so I am told, booked later than ever this year, and in fact some of you are still booking at the moment, as I know. There has also been a flurry of interest in ‘last minute holidays’ in the last week or two - perhaps a lot of people have been holding out for a great bargain. Might I suggest the mountains of the Massif-Central, where you will have all the space and natural beauty that you need…
We are planning a short break in Paris next month. Funnily enough, we were weighing up the possibility of heading for Provence, but decided against it as we are travelling by car…
I didn’t include Paris, as you see - mostly because people don’t book gites and apartments in Paris but tend to prefer hotels, and also because people tend to go there for long weekends etc rather than ’summer holidays’. I’m sure it’s as popular as ever…
Have a nice time!