Running a gîte in France is a incredible approach of producing earnings, whether or not you simply wish to high up your pension, make your second residence pay its payments, or run a severe enterprise to reside from. Whilst there’s a common description of what a lodge is, there are numerous variations and goal teams to match. What selections are you going to make in making a gîte? Rupert Springfield from Gîte Guru walks us by among the selections on this important Guide to making a gîte in France.
Gîtes or mattress and breakfast, that’s the query?
Which fits you and your property higher? Both provide lodging to vacationers, however that’s the place the similarities finish. A guesthouse is a B&B providing a bed room within the proprietor’s residence, bedding, breakfast and day by day cleansing. A bunch is required to be current for checking-in and caring for friends.
A gîte is a self-contained unit with its personal entrance the place friends can cook dinner for themselves. A gîte doesn’t have to supply bedding, breakfast, or day by day cleansing. You can reside away from the gîte, even in a foreign country, with a 3rd get together performing as a contact particular person to your friends. So the property already determines which kind of lodging you may provide – is it an unbiased dwelling, or rooms in your individual home?
A single visitor room is proscribed to providing a most of 5 rooms and accommodating a most of 15 folks. A gîte is limitless, however like a visitor room, if it accommodates greater than 15 folks, it’s thought-about an ERP (Etablissement Recevant du Public) and should adjust to excessive security requirements, comparable to hearth doorways, emergency exit indicators, automated security lighting, and so on.
Table d’hôtes
B&B friends like to have the ability to dine close by, so in case your location is sort of remoted, providing desk d’hôtes will assist improve your B&B bookings, your earnings and naturally, your workload. Table d’hôtes signifies that you welcome your friends to your desk for a night meal. A single alternative of three programs is obtainable (maybe with a vegetarian choice) in contrast to a restaurant menu with various dishes.
Only friends of the visitor rooms are allowed to affix you on the desk—passers-by or native residents will not be allowed, in any other case you’ll have to adjust to restaurant laws. If you intend to serve alcohol, you will need to apply for a liquor license known as a small restaurant license and full a obligatory coaching course known as a working allow.
Consider the rental choices
A gîte is usually rented out for every week, particularly in the summertime months, and you will maybe get twenty to forty bookings a 12 months. A visitor room is rented out per evening, so would require many extra bookings to make a very good quantity of earnings. If there are a number of B&B rooms, you might want a whole bunch of bookings per 12 months.
Each reserving requires communication together with your visitor earlier than they arrive, arranging funds, making ready the room or home, welcoming your friends, answering their questions, and eventually checking them out. And all this often as soon as every week for a gîte, however a number of occasions for a guesthouse. In addition, a visitor home proprietor could provide desk d’hôtes and definitely breakfast (which suggests an early begin!) and day by day cleansing of the room. So working a B&B requires a a lot larger funding of your time than a gîte.
Hospitality is a top quality for each varieties of homeowners – being heat, pleasant, useful and respectful to all of your totally different friends. But an proprietor of a guesthouse is required to be on web site to welcome friends and allow them to share their residence, while a gîte proprietor by no means even has to fulfill them. Are you the kind of host who relishes sharing your house and being readily available to your friends, or would you view that as an invasion of your privateness?!
What’s your buyer base
Will the amenities and the variety of bedrooms and loos in your gîte appeal to {couples}, households or intergenerational households? We have a 5-bedroom gîte and a 1-bedroom cottage subsequent door; the cottage is ideal for grandparents who wish to vacation with their kids and grandchildren however need to have the ability to retreat to their very own house once they wish to!
What nationalities will your friends be? This will partly be decided by the convenience of journey to your space from different nations; the Dordogne has lots of Brits, Dutch and Belgians (all served by Bergerac airport) while Provence has higher flight connections with a wider vary of nationalities.
You may additionally resolve to acquire labels to your gîte to have the ability to welcome particular teams, such because the Tourisme et Handicap label (adapting your gîte in order that it is accessible to friends in wheelchairs, or visually impaired folks) or an Eco label. There are various these, comparable to Gîtes de France’s personal Ecogîte label, or Clef Verte or the EU Ecolabel. These labels aid you promote your gîte’s environmental efficiency, for example specializing in decreased vitality/water use, sustainable supplies, and waste administration,
Does VAT form what you provide?
Most gîtes are (fortuitously) exempt from charging 10% VAT to their friends. If your gîte enterprise earns beneath €85,000 pa (2026), you’re exempt. If you earn over this, then you will need to not settle for stays of over 30 nights, and never provide 3 or 4 of the next 4 para-hotelier providers:
- Breakfast – most gîtes do not provide this
- Bed linen – most gîtes do provide this
- Reception – all gîtes provide this, as both a welcome in particular person or a key left in a keybox meets this criterion
- Regular cleansing – there was a lot debate by the Conseil d’Etat concerning the definition of this. The 2026 definition is that one clear every week (which is the changeover clear) will not be thought-about common cleansing.
If you earn over €85,000 pa, do not provide midweek cleansing, and do not take bookings over 30 nights, you’ll be able to stay exempt from charging VAT.
Gîte Guru
Rupert acknowledges how difficult the principles and laws for fellow gîte homeowners are, and the way staying updated with the continuous adjustments is tough. He posts often on Instagram @gite.guru with updates and vital data that will help you, and in The Gîte Podcast (on YouTube youtube.com/@TheGitePodcast and all good podcast platforms) he discusses the ups and downs or registration and working gîtes with different homeowners. All this info and inspiration is free!
However, for recommendation tailored to your gîte and plans, yow will discover out extra or guide a session with him at giteguru.com