Mas Camps News: the blog comes home

Seems like ages since the last Mas Camps News!

What's been happening?

Well, we had our first holiday since we got here. More on that if you read the blog entries from April. Although we just went to Turkey to see the solar eclipse, we'd like to go back as the trip was far too short. Might even drive it next time as we had some Turkish guests a month or so back who did exactly that. However, they recommend taking the ferry from Italy to Greece rather than driving through Croatia etc. as they reckon that route is a bit dangerous.

The pattern of reservations has been quite different from last year. Very, very little in February and March but once we hit Easter, the occupancy was way up. Almost triple the number of people this June as we had last year. July was slightly higher but completely with "ordinary" guests as we didn't have the equivalent of the two massive bookings we had last year. Different from last year too is that September already has a fair number of bookings.

And we've launched a few more websites. With the quiet period in February, I was able to move www.ourinns.org and www.ourgites.org into PHP and MySQL which has reduced considerably the amount of effort required to put properties online. Not only that but I've taken the opportunity to add a number of enhancements and permit people to add a whole lot more information.

Once all the information was in the database (major nightmare!), I made a start on the much more commercially targetted www.ourholidayrentalhomes.com and www.ourbedandbreakfasts.com. Can't really see them doing well in the search engines this holiday season but the older sites are doing very well. Both www.chambre-dhote.org and www.ourgites.org (listing B&B and self-catering properties in France respectively) regularly appear in the top 10 on google searches.

Last, but not least, I thought that I'd move the blog into my own domain. Still haven't sussed out the full route, but expect to see it arriving at Foreign Perspectives shortly.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: back from holiday
We're just back from our first proper holiday since we took over running Mas Camps in April 2004. It was strange to actually close up for the first time as we've been open non-stop since the day we arrived. Not that it made much difference in the takings as the riots in France seem to have put just about everyone off coming here this year: a year ago when we booked the holiday we thought that we'd have been losing quite a lot of guests by being closed in March/April but in reality it was probably only one or two at best.

Still, Easter is just around the corner and we are rapidly filling up with Spanish guests as usual. Not quite full yet, but there's still another week of booking time to go.

Following the week in Turkey, we spent a few days in Amsterdam which is a bit of a nightmare in a car but a very walkable city with lots to see. This time (our first proper visit) we just strolled around the canals and visited Anne Frank's house so we've a lot to see next time.

Next stop was the first World War battlefield memorials around the Somme in northern France. The memorials are much larger than I'd expected them to be.

We'd hoped to spend some time in Rouen but the riots forced a change in plans and we ended up in a lovely little hotel in Evreux instead. This time of year, most chain hotels in France are full so it forces an exploration of the smaller hotels around the countryside which generally turns up a charming, and cheaper, alternative to the standardisation of the likes of IBIS.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: holiday rental sites
Even though we're supposedly in the high season, there are still gaps of a few days without guests at the moment which is just as well as it's been very hot this year and we're all a little exhausted with the heat.

Surprisingly, I've been able to keep going with web developments up to now and have started the process of launching Our Bed and Breakfasts.com now rather than waiting 'til September. The intention is that it will be a fully commercial site in terms of look and feel but initially it will feed off the OurInns database as indeed will the revamped Our Vacation Rental Homes.com site (initially a clone of Our Holiday Rental Homes). Whether or not I'll be able to attract paying customers to the sites is another question of course but the stats that I started collecting for the sites in June should help the argument.

I'm also hoping to start integrating property sales into the database which could be the key to making the whole venture profitable in the longer term. Short term, it should increase the size of the site which in turn will increase the number of hits for the holiday listings.

After moving the sites back to 1and1, the adsense income (and presumably the hits) is back up to the normal of a few dollars a day. I've still not worked out why Marcus has around twice that but I suspect that it's something to do with the placement and layout of the adverts so I'm going to have to explore that fairly soon.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: the yellow train
We've been here over two years now and have been meaning to take a trip on the Train Jaune (Yellow Train) for most of that time. Well, yesterday we finally got around to it.

The first half of the trip to Latour de Carol is, as you'd expect, through the mountain passes of the Pyrenees but after that it levels out into more normal scenery and finishes the run in the very disappointing Latour train station. In years gone by this must have been a major terminus when you look at the sheer size of the station but there's little to show for all that past glory now so most people seem to take the first train back.

The whole route is very popular with hikers and the train needed to stop at almost all of the courtesy stops on the return journey to pick up parties of walkers.

The train has the ubiquitous open-top carriage but it doesn't seem overly practical to me as three hours out in the sunshine of southern France adds up to a serious case of sunburn. To get the typical photos of the train crossing aqueducts etc. you need to be in either the first carriage or the last one. The "standard" photo of it is taken from the roadside between Villefranche and the first stop at Olette.

Although most people seem to take the train from the "start" of the line in Villefranche, a much better day-trip would be to start from Latour de Carol instead as Villefranche seems to be the only stop on the line where there is a lively and interesting town just beside the train station.

You can only book the train on the day which at least gives a reasonable chance of getting on the trip if you arrive early enough. It's 32? for the trip.

Our next adventure will be to take the Red Train though it doesn't seem to be as interesting as there are none of the mountain gorges to pass through and besides you can drive along the entire route.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: back from holiday
We're just back from our first proper holiday since we took over running Mas Camps in April 2004.

It was strange to actually close up for the first time as we've been open non-stop since the day we arrived.

Not that it made much difference in the takings as the riots in France seem to have put just about everyone off coming here this year: a year ago when we booked the holiday we thought that we'd have been losing quite a lot of guests by being closed in March/April but in reality it was probably only one or two at best. Still, Easter is just around the corner and we are rapidly filling up with Spanish guests as usual.

Not quite full yet, but there's still another week of booking time to go. Following the week in Turkey, we spent a few days in Amsterdam which is a bit of a nightmare in a car but a very walkable city with lots to see. This time (our first proper visit) we just strolled around the canals and visited Anne Frank's house so we've a lot to see next time. Next stop was the first World War battlefield memorials around the Somme in northern France. The memorials are much larger than I'd expected them to be.

We'd hoped to spend some time in Rouen but the riots forced a change in plans and we ended up in a lovely little hotel in Evreux instead. This time of year, most chain hotels in France are full so it forces an exploration of the smaller hotels around the countryside which generally turns up a charming, and cheaper, alternative to the standardisation of the likes of IBIS.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: back from Turkey
Whew. I thought that I'd checked most of the reservations whilst we were in Turkey but there were over 20 new ones sitting for me to go through today.

This year the mix of reservations has changed considerably from previous years with most coming via our own website rather than via reservation systems. We make more money that way (no commission to pay to the systems) but they're a lot more work.

We're still pretty exhausted from the trip so haven't really gotten into the swing of things yet. I made a small start on the assignment for the Spanish course but will have to really get into it tomorrow as it's due for Wednesday.

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: branching out
Happy Halloween!

October was relatively quiet on the hotel front 'til this weekend which is a holiday in both France & Spain so we were completely full from Friday to
Sunday night.

I've been tidying up the various websites that we run and improving their search rankings. The combination of improvements on the main hotel page
(www.mascamps.com) has given us a 10 fold increase in the number of hits so far. The equivalent changes are in the works for www.ourinns.org which is
already moving up the rankings and we're making about $50 a month now on the advertising on it and the related www.chambre-dhote.org (in French) and the self-catering equivalent, www.ourgites.org .

Separately from those developments, I thought I'd see if we could more directly make a few bob on the transport arrangements people make and
registered www.perpignanflightsandcarhire.com which is starting to get a sensible search engine ranking though it's got a long way to go. If you're
booking any travel yourself, you'll find the cheapest car hire in the Perpignan area (no, realLY: I checked them all) and, I think, in Europe, worldwide flights on discount and normal airlines, the Heathrow & Stansted express tickets and even ferries. We've already made about half the start-up costs of this in commissions which is pretty good going I think.

More as somewhere to hang our affiliate links than anything else at present, we've also got www.personallychosen.com which has quite an assortment of
things on it. All the above travel things but also some financial links and even La Senza. In due course, we're planning to use it to sell some of the
photos that we've taken for the website as prints and for a few other items that people have asked us about. Basically, it's intended to be our main
non-mascamps website. If you buy any stuff online, let me know where from and I'll see if we can get a link for it (if you ask nicely, I will probably split the commission with you).

Started experimenting again with e-bay which is a dead cheap way to advertise. Costs just 15p for 10 days which has picked up around 40 views on
average although no direct sales. We're not that bothered about the direct sales this tiME: last year we had one, slightly lossmaking, direct sale but
pulled in getting on for EUR 1000 in indirect bookings over the following 9 months attracted by our ebay ads.



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: branching out
Happy Halloween!

October was relatively quiet on the hotel front 'til this weekend which is a holiday in both France & Spain so we were completely full from Friday to Sunday night.

I've been tidying up the various websites that we run and improving their search rankings. The combination of improvements on the main hotel page (www.mascamps.com) has given us a 10 fold increase in the number of hits so far. The equivalent changes are in the works for www.ourinns.org which is already moving up the rankings and we're making about $50 a month now on the advertising on it and the related www.chambre-dhote.org (in French) and the self-catering equivalent, www.ourgites.org .

Separately from those developments, I thought I'd see if we could more directly make a few bob on the transport arrangements people make and registered www.perpignanflightsandcarhire.com which is starting to get a sensible search engine ranking though it's got a long way to go. If you're booking any travel yourself, you'll find the cheapest car hire in the Perpignan area (no, really: I checked them all) and, I think, in Europe, worldwide flights on discount and normal airlines, the Heathrow & Stansted express tickets and even ferries. We've already made about half the start-up costs of this in commissions which is pretty good going I think.

More as somewhere to hang our affiliate links than anything else at present, we've also got www.personallychosen.com which has quite an assortment of things on it. All the above travel things but also some financial links and even La Senza. In due course, we're planning to use it to sell some of the photos that we've taken for the website as prints and for a few other items that people have asked us about. Basically, it's intended to be our main non-mascamps website. If you buy any stuff online, let me know where from and I'll see if we can get a link for it (if you ask nicely, I will probably split the commission with you).

Started experimenting again with e-bay which is a dead cheap way to advertise. Costs just 15p for 10 days which has picked up around 40 views on average although no direct sales. We're not that bothered about the direct sales this time: last year we had one, slightly lossmaking, direct sale but pulled in getting on for EUR 1000 in indirect bookings over the following 9 months attracted by our ebay ads.




Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: oolster scoots update
Ah fargat tay tell yay that ah hay a made a bit o a change in the oolster scoots version... www.mascamps.com/hotel/os.htm .

Can ah get one o them grant thingys for this?



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: winding down to Winter
We're getting back to "normal" now after the rush of Summer business. The French tourists stop coming the weekend of August 20th but they all come that weekend so we'd to turn heaps of them away that Saturday as we were full with the wedding. Next day, none and it was back to our more normal UK bias on the bookings.

The Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival is always a busy week for us. All the accommodation in Perpignan and for miles around is completely full that week with journalists, photographers and editors from around the world. That week we had two editors from Forward Publishing in London (the folk who do Tesco magazine) and Isaac Hernandez from Santa Barbara (who's a travel photographer published in National Geographic etc.). Isaac was planning on doing a photoshoot of Queribus Castle but left it 'til his last day so, of course, it was shrouded in cloud.

Would you believe that we've STILL no bookings from Expedia? No, neither would I. Can't understand it myself.

Over the year we're averaging just under three times the occupancy of 12 months earlier which is pretty good going. This month (October) is the reference month that we used last year for our occupancy forecast so we're back in the dark again as to how it'll pan out over the next 12 months. Overall it seems to have been a very mixed year in France with quite a few people running almost empty whilst others were full.

There's been a big increase in foreigners buying houses here this year. Whilst last year we witnessed the appearance of "British aisles" in even the smallest supermarkets, this year the most noticeable thing is that people are much more willing to try out their English plus the appearance of English papers in the village for the first time.

Anyway, as we edge into "Winter Mode", 'tis time for us to make a start on the website refresh for the coming year. We're planning to retain the overall look and feel of the existing site but are tightening up on the keyword lists (working on those now) and rewriting some of the text to incorporate them more completely. So, I'd welcome your thoughts on the change from www.mascamps.com/hotel/en.htm (the existing version) to www.mascamps.com/hotel/en_v3.htm . One change that's still to come is the separation off of the reservations section to its own page.

Also still to come is the complete winery/vineyard pages but the second versions are at www.mascamps.com/winery/en.htm and www.mascamps.com/vineyard/en.htm (and in French too). Definitely still in draft, but of interest to David I'm sure, is www.mascamps.com/wines/fr.htm (haven't done the translation of that yet as I'm waiting for the neighbours to check it).

The ongoing development of the regional guide at www.mascamps.com/region/en.htm continues and we've added www.mascamps.com/tours/en.htm which we tried out in paper form from August with considerable success in terms of stays being extended and sales of tickets.

Last, but not least, we're still plugging away at trying to sell our walking tours on Ryanair. So far, no sales but ourselves and the guy doing the tours are very keen on it and the tours look excellent too I think.



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: wedding
Wow, it's been a long time since the last issue!

We've continued at about twice the level of occupancy as last year which is throwing up some shortcomings in the calculations as to how many sheets and towels we need to have. Well, mainly the problem is that we've been pretty much 100% full most weekends but with a different bunch of people on Saturday night than Friday night; we reckon that we need around 50% more sheets & towels than we actually have to properly cover it.

Surprisingly we've been on expedia for getting on for two months now and not got a single booking from them. Just as well really as there's an awful lot of admin in keeping on top of all the bookings when we're close to 100% occupancy seeing as we list something like 120% of our rooms. We've continued to get a reasonable number of bookings from our original reservation system listing of last July and are getting most of the new ones from a couple of places that looked like they'd be minor fill-in sites.

Just over 7000km on the car so far.

Some **** pinched our trailer last month. If nothing else, it pushed us into buying the new one that we were needing and it's heaps better than the last one. Wendy reckons that there's a fair to middling chance that we'll see someone driving around with the old trailer at some stage as it had UK plates so they're probably thinking that we were just tourists.

Just starting to recover from our wedding booking yesterday. We've an absolute mountain of food leftover and will probably have to do one of our "bin runs" today to get rid of some of it as even the restaurant size bins aren't up to taking it all. Everything went really well though the 4am finish was a teensy bit late. After a very late breakfast we managed to get rid of the last of the overnighters around noon and only have two rooms occupied tonight. That could well change rapidly as we had to turn away 6 or 7 people who turned up last night.



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: almost the summer
Still no car which is a major bummer. It's supposed to be here next week.

We've now arrived in the big time with our listing on expedia. I only worked out how we got onto it last week. It seems that in the course of one of my marketing onslaughts earlier in the year I followed up who does the hotels for AirFrance and it's an outfit I'd never heard of called WWTE who are actually expedia/hotels.com. Interestingly, if we'd applied to expedia directly, they'd have turned us down as we'd need to have 30 rooms but apply via WWTE and this restriction isn't applied.

I'd forgotten all about hotelconnect who used to be the people behind FlyBE's hotels but were dumped earlier in the year. Anyway, they actually call out to see you so our application has effectively been lying around for months. The guy turned up during the week and reckons that we'll be on around mid-July. Although they don't look after any airline flying into Perpignan, I think we'll do quite well from their listing as they do most of their sales through travel agents which is an area we'd always wanted to get into. Also, they reckon that another airline is about to start flights into Perpignan and they're looking for more hotels to service that.

We've finally started to get bookings from bookings.net . Just a couple so far but it's a start.

Due to a slight lull before the summer kicks in I've finally managed to make a proper start on getting the winery/vineyard website. It's not online yet but mark 1 should be within a week or two. We'll probably move into online sales not too long after that as they already do mail order next door (only to France though).

Yet another "all building" booking rolled in last night. A travelling theatre group ("la Compagnie Les Affranchis") is staying for a couple of nights (see http://www.ccas.fr/tcult/spectacle.php?ref=156).




Arnold




Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: the Toyota died
We've had all kinds of car problems over the last couple of months with the Toyota which is now dead in the car park with no cooling system, in need of a new radiator, lacking a braking function and with very dodgy suspension following a pickup of rather heavy guests a few weeks back. We think that a couple of thousand euro will sort it out but we're leaving it to the one side at the moment as we hope to trade it in against something like a Landrover at some stage in the not too distant future.

So, we've bought a new Suzuki Alto as our "2nd" car from www.stockauto.com for EUR 7500 or so (yes, #5000 brand new!) and we think it's now sitting in Paris (have to confirm this tomorrow). We're currently working out how to get up there economically to collect it. The train is about EUR 90 which is notionally the cheapest way but requires an overnight stay in Paris which'll bump up the cost. Airfrance is EUR 260 one way (really!) or EUR 47 if I bring John along (they have a "family travelling together" discount and he gets to go free), both plus about EUR 30 taxes ie around EUR 90 but there'd be another EUR 10 or so to get me into Paris. Renting a car is about EUR 100 (if you're renting one, www.mascamps.com/transport/en.htm is the cheapest way to do it worldwide) plus maybe EUR 40 in petrol and EUR 10 in taxes (ie about EUR 150).

Following our little marketing onslaught about two months ago, we're now live on www.activehotels.com, www.bookings.net and www.travelextras.com and have received no bookings from any of them! We're nearly live on Gullivers and Expedia which hopefully will do somewhat better.

No more word from the telly people but they appear to be running behind schedule a bit so who knows?

We've just received our first reservation in German. That'll teach me to get bits of the site into languages I can't understand!

Roy'll be happy to hear that we're finally getting the rugby traffic. There's some match on July 8th and we're almost completely full that weekend as a result of that. Wendy's worried that they'll all be wanting transfers to the match which will take a while in the Suzuki - three people a go means over five trips already and that's just counting the people that we know are going to the match.



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: bookings systems
Another hectic month of marketing is the excuse for the long delay since the last issue. All being well, we're nearly the end of the work that was thrown off as a consequence of the marketing blitz about a month ago and can sit back and wait for all the reservations to flow in.

Leaving out a heap of minor additions to our listings we added the following list of major places in the last month:

- ActiveHotels.... who do "own label" front ends to their system so you've probably used them in the past;
- Bookings... who seem to pop up all over the place;
- Expedia... well, you know these guys;
- Gullivers Travel... who are the people behind loads and loads of different reservation systems from Ryanair Hotels to Octopus Travel;
- Hotels.com ... who feed the databases of all kinds of listing sites; and
- TravelExtras... the new people supplying FlyBE's accommodation.

We're now starting to panic about the effect of managing all the bookings that those listings should generate. Last August we were on one similar system which gave us about 11% occupancy by itself so, in theory, the above lot should add something like 60% to that on a like for like comparison ie a total of 70% or so occupancy before you even count the other listings we have, our own website and people just dropping in.

Wendy has told me not to even think about any more listings 'til we see if we can cope with those we've already got!

It is going to be pretty time consuming to keep on top of the whole lot as in addition to the above major ones we also have RatesToGo which has started to bring in a fair number of bookings and Venere who are pretty consistent over the year. We're also expecting to get considerably more bookings directly from the website now that we've add the "book now" facility.

If I had the time, I'd be inclined to run a book on which will pull in the most business. My money is on WebReservations (our original and, so far, best system) because it's syndicated all over the place but I imagine that Expedia/Hotels.com will not be far behind. I don't think that TravelExtras will feature highly because they're very new and we don't get a lot of FlyBE business anyway. Third place will probably be a three way tie between ActiveHotels, Bookings and Gullivers.

Any thoughts yourselves? What systems do YOU use to book your accommodation?


The car has been causing us all kinds of grief over the last month so we've decided that it's time to get a new one. If nothing else, it will greatly simplify our life as we won't need to go through all the hassle of having to get the Toyota through the French car importation process. Interestingly, the car prices seem to be much the same as in the UK with the main difference being that they use a euro symbol here instead of the pound sign ie they are considerably cheaper. Funnily enough the second hand car prices are almost the same as the new car prices, or at least the French tend to ask for much the same.

Anyway, we're looking for a diesel (preferably automatic), 5 door. We're probably going to use this as our second car in due course so EUR 10,000 to EUR 15,000 is the budget. Sort-of like the Volkswagen Polo or perhaps the Mercedes A. Suggestions welcome!


We had yet another long phone call from the TV company who said that they like our story so perhaps we'll have to make a decision as to whether or not to appear. At present they are looking to do one or perhaps two places in considerably more detail than they'd originally intended so Mayhem at the Mas may yet appear on a screen near you next January!



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: one year on
Yes, folks it is now one year since we arrived here. Well, one year and a bit as we arrived at 7pm local time.

A year ago, we'd no reservations in the book and didn't know that our first customers would be turning up in a few days time. Now we've a smattering of reservations right through to September. A year ago we managed one nights occupancy over Easter; this year 38.

A year ago, we'd hardly any furniture for our own rooms. And we still haven't!

A year ago, we'd just missed appearing on Living the Dream. Now we don't know yet if we'll be in the No Going Back series.

A year ago, I was getting into the shorts & sandles "uniform" that I'd keep up 'til November. Yup, just broke out the "uniform" a few days ago... 32C in the shade this afternoon and I'm a bit sunburnt.

A year ago, I was pretty sure that I'd fail the French diploma. Now I've got Dip French after my name and am making a respectable start on the Dip Spanish.

A year ago, 'yall said you'd be here... and none of you have arrived yet! No, Dorothy, I haven't forgotten your reservation in September.

A year ago, we didn't know how quickly we could get to the clinic. We found out on August 29th when John decided that he'd had enough. Or was it Wendy?

A year ago, we thought we were crazy to have bought a hotel in France. Now we're even crazier and have started looking for the next place!

A year ago, we were wondering if the French bureaucracy was as bad as everyone made it out to be. Now we know that it's even worse than that.

A year ago, we didn't know that we'd be having to make over 300 beds over the following 12 months. Now we're looking forward to making over 500 in the next 12 months.



Just got our car back from the garage. It packed in on the way to Spain on Monday so we've been walking everywhere this week. All being well, we'll be attempting the run to Spain again on Monday.

Now that we've hit the anniversary, we are getting going on selling the house in Holywood. So, if you want an immaculate, spacious two bedroom house with newly fitted luxury bathroom, cabled for BT, NTL and Sky, near to all local amenities and with excellent transport links, you know where to look.




Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: busy times
Can't believe that it's been a month since our last issue!

It's been rather a busy time with several major developments to report.

We're on loads and loads of new reservation and listing sites courtesy of a pretty intensive few weeks of hunting around for new places and getting our details loaded onto them. Net effect of that is that the bookings are rolling in at a fair old rate and we are pretty much fully booked over the Easter weekend and have a nice trickle of reservations most days although most people seem to just book a couple of weeks ahead which is a bit disconcerting.

www.ourinns.org has finally made its appearance on the search engines and is in the first two or three on a range of searches which isn't bad. We're even getting hits from it ourselves! At the moment, it remains a select band of properties but the coverage is gradually increasing as word spreads. If nothing else, the stream of new entries is at the right speed for me to be able to cope with it.

Last, but possibly not least, I may have to change the title of the blog ("Living in France without a TV crew") in the not too distant future. We had a call from Ricochet (producers of the Chaos in the Castle and No Going Back series) last week. They're hoping to do a new series featuring small brit-owned hotels around Europe and it looks like we are on the shortlist for the French entry. We've firmly sitting on the fence as to whether or not it's a good idea. On the one hand, we'd get loads of publicity and would get the benefit of having a top hotelier telling us how to run the place properly. On 'tother, we would get an absolute mountain of junk mail (500 e-mails after each show with 10,000 webhits after each show is typical) and the top hotelier & film crew arrive in mid-summer when we will have barely enough time to do the hotel work never mind making a TV programme. Any thoughts on which side of the fench we should jump if/when they call to ask us to sign the contract?




Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: a new project
I was hunting around on Thursday for places to list ourselves (Thursday is marketing day in our new schedule) and ran across a little thread in one of the B&B owners forums to the effect that there's no decent places to list ourselves.

Anyway, discussions ran on for a bit and as all and sundry thought it was a good idea, www.ourinns.org has just been launched.

Coverage is incredibly patchy at the moment seeing as we're just starting but we hope to have a fairly full coverage of France long before the summer season gets going.

And, who knows, I might make a few bob with it along the way :)



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: introducing Crystal Consultancy webdesign
We're starting to get a fair number of hits on our Dutch pages which is a good sign, though generally speaking the Dutch tend to search in English. It was a doddle to get the pages translated (I'm sure the Dutch is dreadful though!) and I'm planning on doing the same exercise for Portuguese over the next week or so (so far we've had nobody from Portugal at all so perhaps this will pull in a few punters). It's certainly a bit weird to have our dutch transport page listed as number one when you search for "ryanair girona" in google.nl !

I'm still plugging away with the winery/vineyard site, aiming to add a couple of photos a month of their activities during the year. The direct hits on both pages are starting to mount up as the pages get larger and the ranking is definitely up there: search for "winery perpignan" and it's the top listed site! We're wondering when we'll get the first order via the site (they're already getting phone calls originating from it).

Now that this year's website refresh is nearing completion, I thought that I'd put a toe in the water and see if I can pull in any webdesign business from other people, so as of last week, www.crystalconsultancy.com made its debut. It'll only be a winter-time activity though as we get too many customers from about June to September to be able to do anything other than the hotel. Amazingly, there are only 31 webdesigners listed for the whole of France so we'll likely pull in a few punters (that's down to most people only using automated submission to the search engines so I'm sure the real number is much higher). The site's live now and should be listed by google within the next couple of days with yahoo following a few weeks later.

The Spanish course is going fine so far. I try to do it each morning before doing anything else. If nothing else, the Spanish from years ago seems to be coming back to me in bits & pieces.

We had a run to Herault (near Montpellier) during the week to see our new accountant. She's pointed out another bunch of mistakes that our soon to be former accountant had made over the course of the year. A "just in passing" remark of hers highlighted just how bad he was: he managed to register us in a way that wouldn't have let us employ part-time staff which is the only way we'd have probably been employing people. On a much more serious note, due to him having done nothing at all following the initial meeting in February (in spite of him having quite a long "to-do" list), the mortgage cannot be treated as a business expense. We're not sure of the full implications of this as it only sunk in after we'd left but I think that it means that every single mortgage payment we've made over the last year will count as income and therefore be subject to tax; if that's right it will inflate the cost of the mortgage by something like 50%. The only way around that would seem to be to reregister the ownership of the place in the French equivalent of "Mas Camps Ltd" but then that's going to run up something like EUR 20,000 in notary fees (well, mostly transfer tax).

Anyway, we've sent a note off to the soon to be former accountant informing him that due to the mistakes he has made, we no longer require his services and will be calling to collect our file from him on Monday afternoon. I suspect that we'll be seeing him in court at some point to recoup the money that has been lost as a consequence of his incompetence.

The weather here seems to be starting to get back to normal. It was raining quite a lot over the last week but when it isn't it's very warm: definitely t-shirt weather and verging on shorts weather. Going by what the neighbours were saying the other day, this month is a bit hit & miss weather-wise but next month sees a more consistent improvement.

We're going to have another go for the TVs this week. There's an offer on at the moment which'll let us pick them up for EUR 69 so we're going to pick up five or possibly six of them (although I think that we'll pick up one or two as a trial first). At the moment, two of the rooms are wired for French/Spanish TV and we have the bits & pieces to put satellite TV in one other room. However, we know that we can extend satellite TV to one other room quite easily. The gite and room 5 are problems though and we think that we'll have to cable them up specially due to the thickness of the walls.




Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: website design & consultancy
I'm toying with the idea of branching out into website design and a few other related things for the Winter months (assuming that I can get a few punters with cash burning a hole in their pockets).

Anyway, what do 'yall think of www.arnoldstewart.net ? Would you buy a used website from these people?

Any thoughts on the level of charges? (or indeed comments generally: this is definitely mark #1)



Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog

Mas Camps News: still no child benefit!
We're starting to dispare of ever being able to collect on the child benefit over here!

It's been a couple of weeks now since we started a full scale onslaught on the citadel but every time we think we've broken through, we find yet another letter on the doormat a couple of days later (always dated for the day that we were there) asking for more documents. Two letters ago it was asking for proof from the child benefit office in Donegal (yes, Donegal) that they'd stopped paying us; that was sorted by yet another visit when we were assured that the money would be with us within the week.

Saturday, the letter arrived. They want proof of income for 2002. Since the UK tax year is April to March, what they want is actually impossible to provide so we're just going to weigh in with the April 2003 tax statement (if I can find it) which at least covers most of the time they're looking for.


On other fronts, we went live on the main pages (hotel, guide and transport) in Dutch over the weekend and tidied up a few loose ends along the way so now the tabbed look & feel is reflected across all the pages in all the languages and the language bar has been shrunk to cater for the seven languages on the hotel & transport pages (most pages only exist in English, French and Spanish) as the old style was getting a bit unwieldy. We'll be running with that style for the rest of this year.


I'm hoping to add photos of the various festivals to our festivals & events page (www.mascamps.com/events/en.htm) so we're hoping to get along to a reasonable number of them during the year. Locally, there aren't any 'til February and supposedly the first one is the hunting festival at Arles-sur-Tech which the tourist office site says is always the first weekend in February ie this weekend, so off we went. Nope, 'taint this weekend. One thing that the tourist offices here are consistently dreadful at is publicising festivals and the like but you'd think that if they'd listed something as happening this week, it would.


The level of bookings seems to be starting to pick up a little. Not by a massive amount but then we normally get most bookings a few weeks ahead so starting to get summer bookings now is a good sign. The mix of sources seems to be quite similar to last year, in spite of all the additional listings ie about a third each from our own website, from the reservation systems and by phone. As with last year, we haven't much of an idea of where people are getting our phone number but as the breakdown is similar, it's probably from the website (the French rarely book online).


We had a family of Belgians in the other day. They're always good to have as they nearly always take the evening meal and aren't bothered about the cost (almost completely the reverse of the French). Anyway, the coffers for February are starting off on a decent footing as a result. Thanks to a considerable increase in our restaurant charges, we pulled in virtually the same amount as we did for the Dutch hiking group last year and that was including a big chunk of cash for an airport shuttle from Carcassonne!


On the restaurant front, that's one area that we're hoping to promote a whole lot more this year. Due to the awkward time of John's arrival last year we didn't really push the restaurant over the bulk of the high season which was something of a shame as the restaurant pretty much doubles the income from a room. Wendy's planning on giving her coffee shop a go over the next few weeks though I don't know that we have enough passing trade at the moment.


Our Sunday run was cancelled today as it's absolutely pouring. Weather-wise, the neighbours say that January & February are generally a bit of a write-off but that things pick up in March. I've had to take the jumper off over the last few days so I guess the temperature must be starting to get back to normal.


The OU parcel arrived a few days ago (via my parents); we're none too impressed with airmail that takes a fortnight from Belfast to here. Anyway, so far, so good with the Spanish. I've managed to complete the exercises in about 30 minutes when they are supposed to take about an hour; that's about the same ratio as I had with the first French course three years ago. So, Jackie, it'll be no problem for you this time next year either :))





Arnold

Living in France: the Basics Expat blog