Former teacher Alistair Sawday has become the guru of gites and chambres d’hôtes with his B&B and Special Places to Stay series. He tells Jacqueline Karp what makes a gite special
What makes a gite special for you?
I like a place to have personality, not somewhere where people are obviously slaves to fashion.
I hate the word chic. It has to feel authentic, to reflect the people who live there. I don’t mind if a place is a bit untidy or if things don’t match perfectly, though a gite shouldn’t be an excuse for owners to use their cast-off, broken-down furniture.
I’m just back from three days in an Italian home, not much to do, but the lady had put her whole heart into making us welcome and looking after us. That’s special for me.
Do you find any differences in those run by the French and those run by non-French?
To be honest, people coming to France, independent travellers I mean, are looking for something that’s really French.
I tend to find that where the place is run by French people, they instinctively favour local producers and artisans, and that’s one of the things we’re on the look-out for. If the owners are not French, we make sure they know and love their adopted country.
Otherwise, there’s no real difference. If the place feels good, that’s all that matters.
What do you look for in a good gite?
We are increasingly perceived as upmarket but that’s not really the case. We cover the whole range.
We have an incredibly simple bungalow for two at £200 a week and an elegant chateau for 20 at £4,000, but even there you won’t find a whiff of international chic.
Our main criterion is taste, but value for money matters, too. Good beds are essential; kitchen equipment, however simple, must work; the place must feel cared-for. If it’s a dank, unloved money-spinner, we won’t take it on.
What mistakes do owners make?
You can be sure that those who write us pernickety, demanding letters with lists of do’s and don’ts suffer from small-mindedness.
You need largesse d’esprit to open up your home or converted outbuildings.
All sorts of people are going to come and stay, you need to be able to see them as individuals and warm to them, even if they are very different from you. Otherwise, you may be efficient but visitors won’t feel welcome.
Are regulations stricter in France than in the UK?
I reckon they’re similar. The major difference is that the French are very good at disregarding rules and the British are almost neurotic about adhering to them.
But the hotel lobby in France is now gunning for what they call the "unfair competition" of chambres d’hôtes and gites and that means a crackdown on those who don’t pay their taxes or sidestep the health and safety rules.
Do you still manage to visit every place?
We’ve always been a team, and yes, one of us always gets to visit. We have more than 5,000 places on our lists now and a team of local inspectors.
We try to visit every four years, unless there are bad reports, in which case we go back before inviting them into the next edition.
As for the guidebooks, we re-edit about every two years. We now have a permanent team here in the UK for our online editions too.
What singles out a gite as a good place to stay as opposed to hotels or B&Bs?
There is an increasing demand for independence, and with the poor exchange rate of the pound and the euro, staying in one place for a week and self-catering - a word I hate but what else can you use - makes sense.
A gite may be a remote lovers’ bolthole, or a great house for a tribal gathering with space for tents, or a super little studio flat in town, but you always have to fend for yourself in French with the French, at the street market, for example, buying your own dinner ingredients direct from the producers’ stalls, and that can be such fun.
How did you get into publishing?
I’d started taking small groups of travellers around France, trying to find unusual places to stay and authentic places to eat.
Out of that experience, I wrote our first French B&B guide in 1994. I decided to do it myself, and printed way above the 6,000 I was advised.
In fact we sold out of the first 12,000 straightaway and had to do another print run. We sold 24,000 in all. That’s how it all started.
And your best-seller today?
British B&B, with French B&B close behind.
What do you enjoy most about your publishing venture?
We are passionate about the environment. Our books are more and more a platform for good practice in that field.
We are hugely respectful of people in France who take up the cudgels for the local economy and put in a lot of hard work to keep it buoyant.
In my opinion, travel should be used to open our eyes and to protect the local economy.
If you travel around you are trashing the planet and people should realise that.
