Set the scene

Want to make your holiday rental stand out from the crowd? Sue O’Grady explains why it might be time to call in a home styling specialist

- Sue O'Grady

What do you look for when choosing your holiday? This is the question that we should maybe ask ourselves before embarking on letting out our own holiday home. Who do we want to attract? Who would we be appealing to? The answer is probably, people like ourselves!

France is saturated with pretty looking gîtes, picture-perfect from the outside, but many of them turn out to have disappointingly spartan interiors and poor quality fixtures and furnishings.

The way we shop for our holidays via the internet allows us to inspect each room in detail with photos often available from many angles. Properties are put under the microscope and owners should expect to be quizzed or challenged more nowadays in advance of anyone committing to making a booking.

ROOM TO RELAX

If you have been lucky enough to travel extensively for work or leisure you may have encountered many types and standards of ‘hotel’ accommodation. While offering great levels of facilities and service these are often quite sterile environments where guests can feel isolated despite the presence of many other guests.

Once we consider staying somewhere for more than a few nights, then many of us would prefer to have our own space where we can relax at any time of the day without being on show and having to conform to some standard ‘dining’ or ‘sleeping’ protocols.

Some of us also crave something a little different, something more authentic or ‘themed’. Looking at self-catering accommodation across France there are two categories that will always be more successful than the rest.