Keep your guests happy and they'll come back!

Once you have your firm booking for your house in France I suggest the following...(our repeat bookings show this works for us!)

1. We send a Trolley Key Ring with a euro token for UK guests to use in shopping trolleys (These are printed with our house name - nice marketing idea)
2. Give very detailed directions of how to find the house and your phone number in case they get lost
3. Give a Handy Hints re things in the house and where things are (like spare gas cylinder etc)
4. Give local tips - i.e, information re best Supermarket Shopping etc
5. Leave a list of good restaurants (and copies of menus if possible, which many local restaurants will be happy to provide) in the house
6. Leave a well stocked Guide book in the house with leaflets of ALL possible activities in the area.
7. Leave phone numbers of English Speaking Doctors- Dentists, hospitals etc in a prominent place in your house.
8. Do not be stingy with Towels - Bed Linen - Hair Dryers, toiletries etc! These are quite inexpensive to provide but make all the difference to providing value for your guests!
9. Leave a good welcome pack to include English/Irish Teabags - Coffee - Fresh Milk and a few bottles of wine.
10. We leave a fully stocked Wine Rack of 39 bottles of wine and ask guests to replace between €3.50 and €5.00 euro before they leave, (or have an 'honour bar' where guests help themselves to drinks and write down what they've had against a list with suggested price..leave a coin box for euros) . We have never been left short!
11. Trust your guests and they will repay you by leaving everything as they found it!

We'd love to know what you've found works for you in preparing your holiday home for guests..what do guests say they love about your property?...Let us know (comments welcome!)

Don't forget if you'd like to create a simple, highly effective advert for your holiday home that will show off your property to its best advantage you may like to have a look at some examples on myfrenchescape.com

Top Tips for Sucessfully Renting your Holiday Home

Hi my name is Malcolm Gargan. I've been a holiday property owner in France for 2 years and (and also run a successful French holiday rentals site at myfrenchescape.com ). The idea of this blog is to share some of our top tips for renting out your holiday home based on our own experience with our own property and what we're learning from working with hundreds of other holiday home owners in France too!

We're having great sucess renting out our home. I'm often asked how we manage to be 'booked out' 18 weeks per year when there's so much competition in the holiday home market. Now I know some of it is because we're in a gorgeous region of France (Sarlat) in the Dordogne, and the house itself is great.

But there's more to it than that! We've learnt over this time the things that make all the difference in renting our house out all year round (and in making sure guests come back!) and we think you might find it helpful to try what's worked for us.

How to maximize your rental opportunities:

It is a fact that we convert well over 95% of our enquiries to Rentals if we are not pre booked for the period.

We have a 5 bed roomed Perigord style House in the Dordogne which we have had for 2 seasons now.

I am delighted to say that we are one of the most rented houses in the region and we believe it is for the following reasons.

1. Friendly personal contact matters! When we get an enquiry for our house La Fougasse, I immediately phone the potential guest.

2. I ask the potential guest if they have Broadband which really is an excuse to make contact.

All except on one occasion did the potential client have Broadband and I got that rental as well.

3. Without delay I send a very detailed email of all the facilities in the house and activities in the area and I attach up to 15 photographs of the house which are not on the website and I also send a slide show of the villages,towns, and activities around the area.

In the case of the person who had not got Broadband I took the trouble to post a set of Photographs.

4. After 2 to 3 days I make contact again, this time by email and ask the potential guest if they had any questions regarding the house or the area. I also give a route map by car and/or Airport choices from where they live to our place in France. This always brings a positive response.

5. I then send a confirmation email asking for 25% deposit and giving the actual date of when the final payment is due and make sure to follow up with them to ensure everyone's happy.