Lay My Hat

When we bought our place in Herault 8 years ago, we were told that the best thing to do with income tax was to declare yourself a "mini-BIC" - since simply paying a percentage of gross revenue was a lot cheaper than having an accountant figuring out your net profit. So, we have done that o...

I just received the following from our friend Emma Deleon. Strangely, it came to my personal email - which we don't use for bookings. We just ignored it. Cher Monsieur / Ma Je vous écris pour vous demander si vous avez des disponibilités dans votre logement pendant 3 semaines du 1er mai au 22 mai 20...

We ended up with 2 outside units, which were both placed on the roof-top terrace. We will suggest to renters that they turn off the systems when they are up there. We were advised against putting the outside units on the wall facing the street - which would have been the only outside wall available ...

We just had air-conditioning installed in our ancient maison-de-vigneron in Neffies (Languedoc). However, I updated our various postings before Christmas to include A/C, and we now have a couple of bookings for the summer. Last year at this time we had no bookings for the summer. Have others seen an...

Just received an ad from France-Voyage.com wanting me to list on their site for 35euros per year. Has anyone had experience with them? They say that there are no commissions. Sounds attractive given the ridiculously high commissions charged by TA/HL and HA/VRBO. We also list on Gites.co.uk - which i...

We had zero bookings in July, but were relatively full in August. The people here in our part of Languedoc said that tourism was way down in July - probably due to the temperatures in the 40's. So, since we don't yet have air conditioning, it was probably best that no one came. The August bookings i...

Just received this email: Cher(e) Client(e), Vous avez un colis au bureau de CHRONOPOST. Vous disposez d'un délai de 48 heures pour récupérer votre colis, Sinon il sera retourné à l'expéditeur. Veuillez confirmer l'envoi du colis à votre domicile en suivant les étapes au dessous: 1. Appeler le numér...

Let me second that. First 100 days free, then 100 GBP per year after that. I just added our property onto their site - and their interface seems quite simple and clear (other than the photo part). I do like the idea that they simply make the introduction and then let renter and owner conduct their b...

I have seen some positive comments about booking.com here - but have concerns after reading their contract. 1. It appears that they accept a booking - and that's it - your are "not allowed to cancel any reservation". No back and forth. No ability to vet your customers. So, what happens if ...

We have gone from 20 weeks of rentals in our best year, down to 13 weeks, and then down to 6 weeks this year. We have great reviews - close to 30 on Trip Advisor and 10 or so on VRBO/Homeaway. One difference is that there are way more places available so that the companies are using finer geographic...

We spend 5 weeks at our place in Languedoc twice each year. I was wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go SIM card. My phone is setup for 2 SIM cards. Really only need need data as I can use Whatsapp and Skype to send and receive calls. (We do have Orange's Livebox service in th...

Different experience. We dropped our VRBO listing three years ago - as we were not getting many bookings. A few months ago, I noticed the new commission approach, and so called them to see if somehow I could set up a listing and keep the old reviews that we had had. No problem. Our old listing had s...

Several years ago, someone from Ryanair (or so they said) called me to get me to advertise our vacation home on their site. I gave it a pass at that time. But, since then, there are a lot more Ryanair flights to our local airport (Béziers) - so it could be a good market. However, I don't see any men...

Last year we got two bookings through Holiday France Direct. It was otherwise a pretty dead year - we only got one booking from TA/HL, and a 4 week booking through word-of-mouth. So, Holiday France Direct helped save the day. And, as mentioned earlier, they are relatively inexpensive with their flat...

Our village in France has recently become quite popular among Swedes. One of our neighbours there has had good luck using blocket.se to advertise his property to visiting Swedes. However, when we contacted them, along with detailed instructions on how to submit an ad, they informed us that you had t...