French Connections

[Enaid]

Hi, is there anyone on here who advertises their property on French Connections, and if so, how good are they?

We have been renting our little house in Brittany for 11 seasons now. We did originally use FC, but didn't find them particularly good, so changed to Owner's Direct after a couple of years.

However, I hate the new OD, and our bookings this year are really down. We need to renew in December, and I don't really know what to do. I really liked the old OD, and have used it as a holiday-maker too, but it's gone to pot! And it wouldn't be worth upgrading to gold or silver, or whatever. We only have a little 2 bed cottage and don't charge huge amounts. I don't want 'book now' facilities, and everything taken out of my hands.

Thanks for your views.

[GRL]

I have no experience of FC but have you thought about Brittany Ferries as you are in Brittany? If you do want to go with them we can recommend you which gets us a free ferry crossing

There are various ways of advertising - holiday and ferry combined which I think they deal with in total, subscription (where you are in control like the old OD) and commission ... with the commission BF take £29 of each booking (which you have the chance to accept or decline) and then they hand the booking over to you and you charge the customer as normal minus the £29. With subscription and commission you also have a code to give guests 20% off with their ferry crossing.

Apologies if I am telling you what you already know!

[Enaid]

Thanks Rosie. I have briefly looked at BF. We are Club Voyage members already, so we give our number to the guests to get a discount. However, because ferry prices have gone up so much in the past few years, we are finding more and more people choosing to cross via the tunnel and go for the longer drive down.

Is this who you list with? If so, do you get a good number of bookings?

It is so difficult to know what is best.

I do get one or two bookings through the Hampshire County Council website for employees - advertising on there is free! But making the change for the big advertiser is difficult. It is sad, because Owner's Direct is so well known, and I don't know if either FC or the BF site are as well known. I would want to go down the do-it-all-myself route if I chose BF.

[GRL]

We only went onto subscription recently and as yet have not had bookings but it is a quiet time of year and or ad is getting a lot more views than it does on OD. Friends with a one bedroom place in the next village to us get May-Sept almost full through BF.

We were briefly on the book now commission system beforehand and did get a booking through that but felt some people might not like that method so with the apparent demise of successful OD bookings we have switched to subscription. If you were to go on the Book Now it would cost you nothing if you got no bookings and only £29 per booking after that.

I agree though - it's a nightmare to know what to do.

[JaneS]

Hello

My experience with Brittany Ferries has been good. I am on the £29 commission listing. From memory, I have had 4 bookings this year via Brittany Ferries, 2 of which started out as OD enquiries but booked via BF to get the ferry discount. People are researching more.

I have to say that BFs support is good and the new website is nice and easy to use. I used to use them in preference to OD when looking for accommodation.

Hope this helps.

JaneS

[bornintheuk]

Returning to the original question, FC were useless for us in the Charente but may be OK for Brittany.
Totally agree with the rip-off Brittany Ferry pricing.

[oasiscouple]

We used to be with FC and obtained plenty of bookings but they tailed off and we added Chez Nous which gave us many more so we dropped FC and now manage to obtain most bookings through CN for our Gironde property. However it doesn't bring many enquiries for our naturist apartment in Port Leucate so we use other smaller sites.

[la vache!]

However it doesn't bring many enquiries for our naturist apartment in Port Leucate so we use other smaller sites.

Out of interest, what proportion of your naturist guests come from the UK?

[oasiscouple]

However it doesn't bring many enquiries for our naturist apartment in Port Leucate so we use other smaller sites.

Out of interest, what proportion of your naturist guests come from the UK?

It varies from year to year, but this year about half from the UK, but it could be because I put an advert in the BN magazine. Also many people find us direct through our website www.naturistholidays.fr.

[Hendrik]

I am listed at French Connections. Reasonable response rate.
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