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| Garden at Le Cormoran in Talloires |
Disconnected, but surprisingly in synch. Not infrequently, I notice that bloggers whom I follow (principally French oriented) offer thematically consistent posts. Education, the weather, festivals, politics, Brexit (who isn't talking about this?), observations about life in France... appear almost as set topic of the day. Much like the lock-step schooling that my children witnessed/endured/enjoyed/encountered (select as appropriate) in France, the memo regarding uniformity seems to have continued into this blogging world.
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| View from the upstairs bedroom at Le Cormoran |
It happened to me yesterday. I had contemplated an article based around our home in Talloires, which we have on holiday rental. I had it planned out in minute detail in my mind, just like I have at various points in my life planned out exactly what I would say to the bullies who have stood over my children if ever I were to catch those bastards in action. (Hmmm, that is ambiguous, but, no, I am not referring in the latter part of that sentence to my offspring but that small subset of students otherwise known as weak, slimy cowards). You see, the platform (HomeAway grrr) on which we have our home advertised frustrates the hell out of me and occasionally it does me a whole lot of good to vent in writing.
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| Looking down on Talloires and Le Cormoran |
Then Lise from Let's Speak French contacted me. She was preparing a blog about Australians who own holiday-rental properties in France (ours included) but her angle was FAR more positive. She wanted to encourage her language students to picture themselves in various corners of France practicing their French language but take some of the stress out of their travel booking experience by providing them with solid, reliable links WITH NO BOOKING FEES. Ok, that last bit was added by me and so you get an inkling of my angst with the above-mentioned platform who, yes, charges EXORBITANT service fees for NO extra service. At least, nothing more than they used to give pre service fee. I was going to mention the FaceBook group Book your Holiday Direct with the Owner and implore readers to use it (objective achieved - tick), do a bit of not-so-subtle advertising of my own property (tick) and hopefully feel better by receiving loads of comments in the comments section from like-minded readers about the injustice of outrageous and unnecessary holiday rental service fees by booking companies who provide no commensurable benefits.
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| Our French village - Talloires on the Annecy Lake |
PS Here is a link to Lise's blog and if you are the Australian owner of a holiday rental property and we haven't come across each other yet, feel free to send me a message (cb222@me.com). It'd be good to get to know each other.
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| The Annecy Lake glorious in all seasons |
Our apartments in Carcassonne are listed on Homeaway. The prices have to be quite a bit higher than on AirBnB because Homeaway takes such a huge cut, both from the owner and from the guest. The vast majority of our renters are via AirBnB. My gripe with both AirBnB and Homeaway is that they don't divulge rentals to municipalities in order to ensure taxes are paid. When we bought our place in 2015, there were 100 AirBnB listings (I don't remember how many on Homeaway), and 40 on the official Office de Tourisme site. Now there are over 500 listings here, and almost 100 on the Office de Tourisme site, which I assume are the ones that are paying taxes (and yes, we are on the Office de Tourisme site and do pay taxes). I suspect the rest are illegal rentals, which hurts us and also hotels, which are major employers.
ReplyDeleteBut AirBnB takes only a 3.5% cut, which seems quite reasonable for the ability for guests to pay by credit card. It protects guests and protects us.