Just look at the picture here on the left: the writing in French  says: "who will get the summer job?". Indeed the most popular resort on France’s Atlantic coast, Les Sables d’Olonne in Vendee, just decided to hire a couple of youngsters to spread tanning cream on the upper shoulders and arms of the tourist who ask for it. 

Considering the growing unemployment rate in France, we suggest to create other such job. For instance:

1. Water temperature advisor : he/she dives periodically into the sea, say every other quarter of an hour, and screams : "it’s warm" or "it’s cold".
2. Moskitoo killer : just slams dead any moskitoo that dare to land on a tourist’s skin
3. Sun tan body-guard: you know, you’re just laying in the sun, your eyes shut, et boom… you discover that a hoard of boys just chose you as one of the borders of their imaginary soccer goal… Sun tan body-guard would guarantee a peaceful sun bathing.

Enjoy your vacations!

We still don’t know how the drama of the water pollution and the quotations of the Louisiana and the Florida is going to end.

Nevertheless we are all concerned, even us workers of the tourist industry on the Atlantic Coast of France.

Without putting all the blame on the oil industry, it seems to me that several aspects of the extraction and consumption of oil should change. That’s why:

1. A s long as oil cost approximately about twenty dollars per barrel (until the second war of Iraq),  to the drilling too deep into the sea wasn’t profitable
2. But when its price doubled and even tripled (more than 70 $ the barrel today in spite of the crisis), the depth of the drillings was multiplied too 
3. In the case of the BP platform BP which just exploded, the 1500 m of depth of the leak)make very difficult the sealing of the hole or any other technique to avoid an ecological disaster assuming biblical proportions
4. Even the American government seems powerless to impose to this oil company the enormous investments necessary to find a fast and effective solution, in spite of the fact that the exploded platform is in its territorial waters
5. Let us imagine a similar accident in the North Sea, in one of the oil platforms in the British territorial waters: The oil spill would arrive to France’s Atlantic Coast, and the chances are high that the French government would be almost powerless towards a British oil company which works in territorial waters of the same nationality.

Remedies which seem  feasible, for each of the points explained above:

1. Doing all we can  to reduce our oil consumption, thus preventing oil shortage to drive up prices to the point where oil companies dare to practice drillings that, although risky for the environment, are profitable
2. Consequently, delaying as much as possible  the inevitable increase in oil prices and spread it over a long period  of time
3. Pressuring authorities so that they adopt an effective international regulation to discipline the extraction of the oil, like the one adopted for international air traffic
4. Realizing that we live in a globalized economy, where the national level is a useless to manage certain businesses. To put it bluntly, we need more Europe.
5. putting aside any kind of parochialism, nationalism, which prevents the common efforts demanded by problems on a global or at least European scale.

Unless we want to believe that an oil spill stops in front of the national borders.

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- Stop believing what the specialized press tells: you can’t make a living with a gite or bed and breakfast. Know that it asks time, personal investment. Always providea warm welcome
- If you’re enticed by the earnings, you’d better abstain
- Provide a very high level, of comfort, presentation, kindness, etc.
- To reckon the cost of one’s investment, not contenting oneself with promises; to know well the touristic potential of its sector;  to make an intelligent advertising; verify that the sector is not saturated in accommodations; to know that it will be necessary to be available, always in a good mood; to have no sensitive skin when chronic dissatisfied will come to demolish with enjoyment what you built very carefully.
- Know that it is necessary to  listen to the customers, being available. It is not because it’s summer that we are on holidays. But if we like it that, it’s really great.
- Expect to work hard for few money!
- To like receiving customers, but especially, the service implies sometimes boring or thankless tasks. (Ex: cleaning especially in the case of tactless customers).
- Assess existing structures on one’s municipality, geographical sector …
- Make a market study beforehand … Do not forget that gite or bed and breakfast these last years have enjoyed an exponential development …
- To look at the surroundings, at those who are already settled and to meet them.
- Open-mindedness and availability
-  Know for what we expect from the activity. Contacts, valuation of  the earnings; especially in the bed and breakfast activity the investment of the person is enormous.
- Do not think that we can " make a living on it ", unless you run 5 gites  and 3 bed and breakfast, and you fill them up amways!
- Attention to logistics and equipments. You’d better have a kitchen, I lack one.
- Like the contact and be very patient
- Do not count one’s time, forget the hope to earn a fortune
- Find a theme, stage the history of your places "to charm" customers; work on the image of gite or bed and breakfast according to that. Importance of photos!!!
- There are too many gites or bed and breakfast n our corner,we ought to dissuade people from creating it in Vendee.

There is a saying: "An informed man, is a half-rescued man". The other half is on you.

 We continue our interview with the managers of holiday cottages and bed and breakfast for the simple reason that their answers are always interesting, sometimes edifying, never commonplace.

Question: can you make me some examples of particularly nice customers?

The answers of the members:

I remember a little small English boy 3 years old, Benjamin, who looked for me every day and told me its life and activities (I still did not understand). His parents were bothered to see their son always at the house; but it was so good-looking that it was not a problem. The souvenir of an English couple with 2 young children who came to 2 occasions at the beginning of my activity and who every year send me their wishes and give news of their children. A couple which did not know how to cook mussels in white wine. We prepared them and ate with them.

- A family of 6 who were particularly bound with a young couple and 2 babies who according to the last  news became friends and see each other regularly.
Grandparents and their girls ( 3 ).
The same family consisted of 3 generations, all give news to us.
- The Bretons: a couple often returns, Belgians, people of the North
- Flowers; sometimes they leave offering you a present or a bottle, and that they invite you at home (for me in Portugal) where I was welcomed well outstandingly and free of charge
- Those who invite you to the apéritif and take the time to prepare specialities of their region. (Ex: quiche lorraine) Those whom we invite to the apéritif and bring a small bouquet.
We  provided small services and very often there is a present in return (pottery, nice-smelling candle, plant)
- We are always surprised by the numbers of presents which we receive, our guests are very pleasant with us.
- In 2009, a charming couple proposed us free of charge a part of their big house in the Var. Another one  sent us an attractive hand-made place mat. Others offered us wine, prunes of Agen, etc.
- Tourist who returns and with whom we share activities during their stay. Little gift at the end of stay to thank us.
- Those who leave by making us a little gift (candies, chocolates or specialities of their region)
- Vacationers who practice the do-it-yourself or who come to participate in my workshop
- A couple of spouses arrived directly from Belgium: madam still had her dress on her and her bouquet which she gave me. We tidied up plants and presents in the barn and drank a cup of champagne.
- Several small families arrived with presents for us.
- English people who invite you to the apéritif at the bottom of your garden with a bottle of  cheap warm rosé and an old apple pie.
- A solitary person with his donkey
- All the neighbours’ days: marriages, birthdays(anniversaries), and even funerals..We learn fast to know the life of the village.
- Those who invite us to the apéritif even to dinner in our holiday cottage to taste their cooking or specialities of their region.

 In Vendee,  the owners of gites and bed and breakfast share their greatest satisfactions with their customers

 - exchanges, divisions, social diversity - to meet nice new people - the contact, meetings, the sharing of a large house…

- this activity breaks the monotony of my solitary daily life, enabling me to enjoy pleasant  and even interesting meetings certain hosts, more rarely than formerly, being very pleasant

- This activity enables me to make ends meet  - To meet people of all horizons and all social environments - Diversity of the meetings, user-friendliness, pleasure of having satisfied customers - To meet people from all over the world - the friendly contact and the expressed satisfaction of our hosts (lodgings and rooms) - the contact with beautiful new families - Exchanges

- The pleasure to welcome, the meetings, the fact of pleasing by preparing the table for breakfast

- The contact with the hosts

- Meeting new people, the pleasure to please

- The exchanges with the persons especially when these want to discover the region off the common track

- Let people discover the region, observing them, and adapting the propositions according to their tastes

- The payment and the pleasure to often discover very interesting people. Let them discover our country

- The appreciation of our buildings and their preservation, the human contact with the vacationers,

- The relations which we can maintain with some who become friends, the contacts and the exchanges with the other owners of lodgings for us, redeemed from inactivity by the preservation of a physical and intellectual activity

-  Meeting people of any kind

-  Meeting people people of any age, which prevents us from aging too much

I had some huge customers and when I saw them arriving, at once, I thought "Oh, my beds!" and then, I have laughed a lot - beds resisted, and the customers returned, and return this year.

- When my lawn mower broke down, an Englishman repaired it and finished my job. Cool!

- The suite was reserved for 2 months by hosts for a family dinner. On Saturday after oon the bell rang and a gentleman appeared saying to me that he had reserved the suite: very surprised and already in panic, I told him that his reservation was for the following evening, I had no doubt. This charming gentleman had signed and paid the room without verifying that he had made a mistake in the daytime. I thus did what is necessary to find him an accommodation at a colleague’s cottage.

The Tourist office organizes a reception every Monday in the Summer, with a free bingo for the tourists. A family of our lodging gained a goose game. Coming home it put the game on the roof of the car and forgot it, it is my neighbor who found it on the road. Imagine the joy of the family when I gave  t back to them, the game had made 8 miles on the roof before falling near the door of our house.

Vendee: is still too early to criticize. However, in our beautiful country, grumbling often contributes to help one’s cause. That’s why, without being hostile to our president, I raise a preventive protest.  Just in case the response of the French government to Xynthia would look like that of George Bush to Katrina, i.e. shockingly insufficient.

In fact, I was also a little worried during the first reaction of the president, which reassured the stricken departments by promising a help for the gargantuan sum of 8 million Euros. So, what  are they going to do with 8 millions Euros? Repair thirty houses? Distribute 800 000 ladles to the inhabitants of the stricken coast for the next storm? Buy them 80 000 pumps? I was puzzled! Fortunately, lately they quoted figures that are a little more relevant .

Other trick which puzzles me: we do not speak any more about the global warming. The theories of 11 scientists out of 10, which feared a rise of the level of the oceans, as well as an outbreak of storms, seem forgotten. All right, the monomaniac obsession of our media brings them to stuff us with one nightmare at the time: H1N1 flu, bird flu, financial crisis, etc. All right, companies and governments do not have money anymore to invest in renewable energies, and prefer to rush into the dead end of 200 $ per barrel oil. Nevertheless, I would have liked some clarifications on the causes of the increase in number and in intensity of storms. Is the climate change there for anything? Because, if that’s the case, it is advisable to invest in the hinterland of Vendee. Before some decades, we shall have a house with a view of the sea, and its value will have doubled. The same for our gites and bed & breakfast.

Question : What is the funniest situation that you have ever managed to live?

The answers of hosts:

- First year, some Belgians, 1 couple and 3 children came on holidays in Vendée one week before reserved period (signed Contract, and paid stay). We thus welcomed them as a matter of urgency at the request of a

tourist information office of the North Vendee.

- An "illegitimate" couple in top secret which informed us about their situation. 

- The intervention of my tamed ferret in the room of a couple. I found madam stamping on the bed while Zippo looked at her(it) completely startled.

- A bizarre couple by the way they live and think. Among others, they did not travel in boats in the swamp from Poitou because they did not want to be remarked.They left for La Rochelle to visit the city but they couldn’t find a place to park their car: they returned to their cottage without having visited La Rochelle. It was a couple in their fifties without handicap.

- Not seeing any car anymore on the parking lot I entered a room one morning to do the housework there and I found an attractive naked woman, siting on the ground painting her nails. The surprise was mutual!

- A couple of childhood friends, who meet accidentally in our holiday cottages at the end of at least 20 years of separation (one staying in the Paris region, the other in the South).

- We meet all around the barbecue.

- I had forgotten to attach 2 twin beds to make only one measuring 180 cms, and they fell on the floor.

- Not accepting animals, I did not expect one morning to find an attractive kitten  in the bed of a girl who had left for walk with her parents …

- A girl locked herself into our toilets to stay in our holiday cottage.

- Vacationer who demands sheets the last day, while the bed was ready.

- A midnight swim of a customer, the noise of the water of the swimming pool having woken me up, I was persuaded that it was an intruder, and I turned on the big lightings of the garden!!!

The continuation in the next ticket! 

The Melusine pass card assures a particularly warm and privileged welcome at numerous tourist partners members’. Concretely, it allows to enjoy reductions which sometimes exceed 10 % on numerous local products, leisure, restoration  and accommodation activities. It demonstrates, once more, that, even if free market needs a certain amount of competition, unity results in strength, and the collaboration between people working in the tourist industry deploys win-win synergies, for themselves and for their customers.

Our praise to all those who dare to go beyond a certain individualism, to bet on the strength of synergy and cooperation between professionals. We are not there still there, but, in the long term, the association could indeed become, through a closer and closer collaboration between his members, a kind of tourist village spreading througout our beautiful swamp in Sude Vendee. See Welcome  Vendee for more information.

A magnificent tourist zone in Vendée, strewed with charming bed and breakfast, would be the first one to be submerged should  the level of the ocean climb because of the looming arctic glaciers melt down.

The swamp of Marais Poitevin, a coastal zone of Vendee, Deux-Sèvres and Charente-Maritime, is a space which was given up by a withdrawing ocean about five centuries ago. In fact, it was the monks of five abbeys of the region who began the work of draining the water from the swamp, building dams and channels. This titanic job continued until the 80s.

Wet swamps, which is the most oriental part, is qualified as green Venice, and  cover for their part a surface of about 17 000 square miles, whereas swamps qualified as intermediaries (imperfectly dried out) represent approximately 11 000 square miles. The height of this swampy zone is at an intermediate level between that of high waters and low waters. With my GPS, I find heights going from less two yards to 10 yards.

My conclusion : the debate of Copenhagen on the rise of the level of the oceans gives me the shivers.