Riding the storm

Hotelier and industry consultant, Tim Bell, gives an inside view into how small accommodation providers in France have been coping and adapting during the recent global turmoil

- Tim Bell

It still remains a challenging and worrying time for most during this unprecedented world crisis. The international hospitality and tourism sector all but closed down in the immediate aftermath of the lockdown. Today, it stands to be one of the hardest hit industries as it delicately balances the limitations of socially distanced customer service, coupled with a rapidly shrinking world economy.

After months enduring some of the strictest quarantine and movement controls in Europe, France has now not only fully reopened up its internal economy, but also the doors to Europe and other ‘designated’ countries beyond.

The vast, hugely varied accommodation sector, which historically welcomes more annual visitors than any other nation in the world, has undergone a rapid and radical revolution to ensure it can continue to attract customers in this fragile new era.

The continually forced need to keep personal distance and its associated sense of safety fell comparatively kindly into the hands of the self-catering accommodation sector. Private homes, villas and gîtes that offer generous outside space saw the first notable demand in the period following 11 May, when the French Prime Minister officially declared that people were permitted to travel up to 100km.

The public, who had been largely ‘imprisoned’ for two months, with massively limited scope to be outside their own homes, clearly had an overwhelming desire for an immediate change of scenery. Average length of stays were markedly longer than the usual springtime average, and of course, all customers at that time were French.