Running a French Holiday Gite in Rural Brittany

Monday, November 24, 2008

"Credit crunch" affecting bookings ?

With all the news of doom and gloom on the high street and talk of recession I've been thinking about whether we're seeing any signs of that in the holiday bookings for our Gite this year.

Today I took a booking for a week's holiday in June 2009, and a few hours later whilst sitting on a plane descending into Frankfurt airport (a one-day work trip for a training course), I thought I'd do a quick bit of analysis to see how we're doing compared to the last couple of years.

Right now (23rd November 2008) we have bookings for one week in June, half of July and almost all of August 2009 already booked - a total of 7 weeks reserved.

At the same point in 2007 we had exactly the same pattern of 7 weeks booked, one week of June, half of July and almost all of August 2008; and looking further back to 2006 it was slightly higher with 8 weeks reserved, a week at Easter, a week in June, half of July and almost all of August.

There are slight variations year on year as to when we receive the holiday bookings; last year was slightly earlier with bookings coming through in August and September whereas in previous years (and this year) they've not really started until October, but given that we've just taken two bookings in the last week I'm hopeful that the Gite will remain as popular as it's always been.

And as a family we have (for once) got ourselves organised and booked our own Easter and Summer holidays in the Gite for next year - usually we leave it too late and find there's no free dates.

I'm absolutely looking forward to 3 weeks of doing nothing next August ... although knowing me I won't be able to keep still and will be drawn by the lure of plasterboard and wiring in the second house!

PS: It's snowing in Frankfurt and I forgot to bring a coat (Brrr). I was amused to see that the airport code for Frankfurt printed on my luggage label is "FRA", a brief reminder of France perhaps?

PPS: The photo is of the lounge, dining room table and lovely beech open stairway in our Brittany Gite

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