It’s arrivals day for our summer guests and I suspect anyone who owns a gîte, feels my pain. I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof and I’ll be this way right up until the last guests leave with a sigh that says, ‘we’ve loved it here’ and I can finally relax.
Being responsible for someone else’s holiday is not to be taken lightly. They’ve saved up, planned and dreamt of their time at your gîte, often for as long as a year and it feels like their wellbeing and memories rest in your care, at least for a while.
So as many of you settle down to your gin and tonics and leisurely evenings in the summer sun, for me and I suspect many other gîte owners, July and August are a time of worry. I monitor my phone and emails hourly and fidget relentlessly, from the day of a guest’s first arrival to the moment of their departure, when I start the process all over again. Where my directions sufficient? Did they figure out the bins and recycling ok? Do they love it? Is everything working? Are the drains behaving themselves?
I worry about the weather, whether or not the welcome basket has enough in it, how the garden furniture is laid out and what a guest’s very first impression is as they walk through the door...