Has 'Chambres d'Hotes' been coopted by AirB&B?

[Mooph]

Greetings. Some may remember me from years past. I'm revisiting this new iteration of Slow for updated information, last trip 2012. I have various questions that will be popping up as I plan for a next solo car trip to France, hopefully for a couple of months in Sept-Oct.

This time I'll be blessed by a home base at a friend's cottage near Chateau-Thierry in champagne country east of Paris. I can access a 45 min. commuter train into the city, or mosey as I wish. I plan to lease a car.

My favorite way of doing France is meandering backroads to small towns and villages, and then, calling a guesthouse from (what was in the past) my old green Chambres d'Hotes book. I'd usually find a room for the night owned by some dear old retiree or couple. Now however, I've discarded my old hard copy book when I moved to a retirement community in Santa Rosa, figuring it would be outdated. From what I can tell, no updates have been printed.

The world seems to have changed. Gites and Chambres d'Hotes de France appear to be only online, and most listings look gentrified and more expensive. What has happened to the bevy of retirees with a room and evening chat to share for a night at a reasonable price? Do they still exist? Have they all joined AirB&B and raised prices to get themselves listed online?

Thus far I'm heartsick at the prospects of places being so booked up ahead that my old lackadaisical meet-through-who's-available-tonight-via-afternoon-phonecall whimsy is just way too yesterday. Are there any not-so-commercial sites where such folk make themselves available?

I sense a crash course on the world of Apps coming my way. (I've remained a MacBook Pro person, and though I got an iPhone, I use an old fogie's server--Consumer Cellular--and only text. I don't even understand how to use wifi vs. data for internet on my phone.) I'm sure an iPad is in my future.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

Karen
pbase.com/karenmickleson

 

[veronicafrance]

I think you're right -- the traditional chambres d'hôtes have become far less common and those that do exist differentiate by going up market, some to the point of almost being boutique hotels. That said, looking on AirBnB for rooms can turn up people doing it the old way. We recently had a lovely stay in Uzès with a couple who felt like old friends within half an hour of arriving (the glasses of rosé in the garden may have helped).

In September/October, you shouldn't have any problem with last-minute bookings, even in fairly touristy areas.

 

[Sojourner]

Fear not, there is no need to change your preferred way of travelling. The internet has not yet moved into a position of 'world domination', regardless of what some people seem to think and some people would like you to believe. It is entirely possible still to meander back roads and find places to stay as you go.

There is no doubt there are now entire generations of people who have no experience in doing that and live in fear of not having a reservation somewhere beforehand and having to sleep on a park bench because all the inns are full. They just don't know any better.

Finding a place to stay in a city is entirely different from finding a place to stay in a small village. My favourite method is to find a restaurant/bar to stop in and order a coffee/glass of wine. Then I ask the server/owner if they can suggest a place to stay and I describe what I am looking for. Almost always, they have a suggestion or two.

My favourite example was when my wife and I were 'meandering some back roads' in France and came to a nice little village on a riverside. It was a Sunday and the only place open on the main street was a restaurant on the riverbank. We stopped for lunch and then decided it would be a nice place to spend the evening. So I did my 'can you help us' routine and asked for suggestions of where to stay. The restaurant owner told us of a nice family run little hotel just a short distance away. We drove to the hotel only to find the hotel front door locked and no sign of anyone being around. So back to the restaurant.

When I told the restaurant owner the hotel was 'closed', he said, 'ahhh oui, une minute'. He went and made a phone call and about 10 minutes later Francois, the hotel owner showed up. As he joined us for a glass of wine, he explained that Sunday was his day with his family like any civilized person does and so there was no one at the hotel. However, all we had to do was enter the code into the door and we could go in and choose any room which had a key in the door which signified it was vacant. He gave us the door code and left us with a smile and saying that he would see us in the morning. So of we went and picked a room to stay in. The following morning when we went downstairs for breakfast, there was Francois with a smile and a 'bonjour mes amis' to greet us. No muss, no fuss, no credit card imprint beforehand, no worry that we would not simply steal a TV and abscond with it, etc. Simple trust in people to be as honest as himself.

It is entirely possible to travel like that still Mooph, you just have to travel in the right places.

 

[Mooph]

Thank you both for responding. I will be investigating AirB&B, Veronica. Another friend says I can find places on Trip Advisor, but again, those are 'high pressure to book ahead' spots. It takes a lot of culling to pin down spontaneous options.

Sojourner, I loved your story. And, a great idea to ask at a local 'joint'. I love your description of your experience using the local grapevine. What year was that?

 

[veronicafrance]

Thank you both for responding. I will be investigating AirB&B, Veronica. Another friend says I can find places on Trip Advisor, but again, those are 'high pressure to book ahead' spots. It takes a lot of culling to pin down spontaneous options.

Sojourner, I loved your story. And, a great idea to ask at a local 'joint'. I love your description of your experience using the local grapevine. What year was that?

Not France, but we once found a place to stay in a small village in Spain by asking a woman walking down the (otherwise deserted) street -- who promptly said we could stay in her recently renovated cottage just a few yards away ...

As well as asking in restaurants and bars, local tourist info offices are a source of "offline" options -- they usually have a list of local accommodation and may even be persuaded to phone for you if your French is not good.

 

[Sojourner]

That was a few years ago Mooph, but it is only an example of how it works. I use that basic method frequently when travelling 'off the cuff'. I could give you lots of other examples.

Whenever people post in travel forums about pre-planning vs. winging it, the same old same old objections are always voiced by those who plan, saying why winging it is no good.

But here's the thing. If you are a planner and always pre-book, how much experience do you have in finding ways to wing it? Little or none obviously. So a planner saying why winging it won't work is like a plumber trying to tell you what's wrong with your electrical system. It is a topic they are not qualified to comment on. If you want to know how to fix your electrics, you ask an electrician, not a plumber. If you want to know how to wing it, you don't listen to those who are pre-planners.

It all boils down to an individual's comfort zone and perceived risk. One person may be very uncomfortable with the idea of starting out in the morning and not knowing where they are going to sleep that night. They can list all kinds of perceived risks in doing that. Someone else, is not uncomfortable and perceives little or no real risk in figuring it out as they go along.

To me it is all about flexibility. The planner wants the safe, sure, known and to get that gives up flexibility. To be fair, flexibility may not even matter much to them. The non-planner usually puts flexibility above all else and will not sacrifice that unless forced to do so.

Take your use of the word 'meander'. It's a good word and is defined as, "
1.
to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course:
2.
to wander aimlessly; ramble"

By definition then you cannot plan and meander! So if someone says, 'I just want to meander through France', we are going to have to either say that is doable or say that it isn't. If pre-booking is a necessity or you risk having to sleep on a park bench, then 'meandering' is obviously not a practical thing to try and do. But anyone who believes that to be true is just listening to the marketing hype on online third party booking sites which say, 'only 2 rooms left available.' It's called brainwashing the masses.

The hotel industry in general operates on a 60-70% occupancy rate. They also have a 10% 'no show' rate on average. Consider those two numbers and what the chances are of every room being booked in any given hotel on any given night. How can they all only have 'only 2 rooms left available' when you look online? Sure a hotel can be fully booked during a major event in the area but not every hotel is full all the time which is what the online booking agency tries hard to get you to believe. 'If you don't book right now, you will be sleeping on a park bench'. I don't think so.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266741/occupancy-rate-of-hotels-worldwide-by-region/

Simple common sense will tell you that "the prospects of places being so booked up ahead that my old lackadaisical meet-through-who's-available-tonight-via-afternoon-phonecall whimsy is just way too yesterday.", is simply not true.

There are 15,878 registered Chambres-Hotes in France for a start and they aren't all up market or boutique places. What's more, every single one of them if it displays the 'Chambre-Hotes' sign is a legal rental unlike the majority of Airbnb listings.
https://www.chambres-hotes.fr/index_en.html

The internet has many good points but it also has its bad points. One of the bad points is the ability to persuade people of anything. Illegitimi non carborundum Moomph (don't let the b*st*rds grind you down).

 

[Pauline]

We are in France now, in Brittany near the Normandy border. Out driving around we see many Chambres d'Hotes signs in the small towns and in the countryside. I don't know if they have vacancy - we saw only one sign that indicated vacancy - but I imagine they are not all fully booked. Because of online access to booking, they might be booked up ahead in high season.

 

[Sojourner]

The odds are that most have on average 50% vacancy on any night of this month Pauline. Unless there is a big wedding in a small village or an event of some type going on.

See that 'might in high season' comment you made is what the third party sites are counting on. It's about FEAR. They want people to think they can't just wing it. Because anyone who wings it obviously isn't booking on a third party website.

Consider this. The internet really didn't become a factor until the late 90s. In terms of travel and third party websites, even later than that. So it is only in the last 20 years or so that booking online has become common. So what did everyone do before that? Someone who is say 40 today, can't remember what anyone did before that because they were too young to be involved generally speaking. So they know no other way of travelling and they have been conditioned to believe what they are told by the third party sites. They read, 'only 2 rooms left' and they believe it!

I had an ex business partner who started the first online hotel booking site in N. America in the mid-90s. He was a sales and marketing guy like me. He sold that company (it's still one of the biggest) and retired to the Cayman Islands in the late 90s. One of his favourite sayings was the P. T. Barnum line, 'there's a sucker born every minute.'

Here we have Mooph who does not want to book everything months in advance saying, "thus far I'm heartsick at the prospects of places being so booked up ahead that my old lackadaisical meet-through-who's-available-tonight-via-afternoon-phonecall whimsy is just way too yesterday."

It upsets me to see someone use the word 'heartsick' when there is no reason to be at all. How did Mooph come to that belief? It is not a reflection of reality, it is a reflection of what the third party booking industry wants us to believe. In fact, anyone can travel without pre-booking anything if they want to but if they are led to believe they can't, fewer and fewer will even try.

Often when someone posts on a travel forum that they intend to try, they get all kinds of responses saying, 'no don't do it' and 'no, it's not a good idea because of x, y and z.' Responses by people who believe what they are saying but actually don't know what they are talking about. They've been manipulated by clever marketing.

I think that those who have an interest in travel to the point of participating in travel forums and wanting to share information on travel, should be spreading the word (especially to younger people) that there is a choice of how you travel in terms of finding a bed.

It doesn't matter which way any individual chooses to do it, whether pre-booking or winging it but I think they should be told they do have a choice, it is not 'pre-book or risk sleeping on a park bench'. There is a choice and both are viable choices.

 

[Ian Sutton]

In days gone by I was happy to travel around with nothing booked, though only where I felt culturally / linguistically safe, so that would be UK & Ireland, plus Australasia (I've not been to the US or Canada). Italy would be ok now I've got modest linguistic understanding.

However my partner would suffer anxiety without having the confidence everything was booked and we had all the details with us. I can live with that, as fighting against it would cause anxiety and that's not going to make for happy traveling!

Looking back though, when we did book in advance in the past, the photos & descriptions provided by travel agents were a pale shadow of what we see posted by even private individuals now, whilst it's not uncommon for Italian residences to show a full floor plan now! In the old days there were plenty of horror stories about places being nothing like the descriptions, or the descriptions being very vague, right through to only advising the hotel / changing hotels on arrival.

The times change, for better or worse. We will adapt.

regards
Ian

 

[joe]

I think that those who have an interest in travel to the point of participating in travel forums and wanting to share information on travel, should be spreading the word (especially to younger people) that there is a choice of how you travel in terms of finding a bed.

It doesn't matter which way any individual chooses to do it, whether pre-booking or winging it but I think they should be told they do have a choice, it is not 'pre-book or risk sleeping on a park bench'. There is a choice and both are viable choices.

Sojourner, my experience with the younger generation is that they are certainly aware of the choices. I know lots of young travelers who never even consider booking places in advance, and rely on the fact that they will certainly find a vacancy wherever they travel. They travel with only a vague return date planned, and don't consider accommodations as the critical part of their trip. Their trip planning is usually restricted to buying a plane ticket (pretty close to the flight date), and researching their destination a bit. I'm not even sure that they feel that they are being "adventurous" this way - maybe they just can't decide what they really want, so they leave "blank spaces" in their trip in the meantime.

The success of third-party booking companies is actually based on the "convenience" that their platforms supply, not necessarily "fear". Look around you : almost everyone is living their lives through a screen of some sort - if someone is reading a book that way, texting a friend that way, checking his bank account that way, studying that way, and navigating that way....then no reason not to travel that way. In fact ,third-party companies are just feeding on something that has become culturally standard in the modern web-based world : having a multitude of choices at your fingertips. It's not a lack of choices that is making everyone do the same thing, on the contrary : if you don't dive into the virtual sea of endless possibilities (the Internet), you are apparently not living your life to the fullest. The big companies are out there waiting with their colorful buoys with the catchy slogans. But this sea of endless options also means that there's a lot of room out there, room for all types.

These platforms can potentially be somewhat beneficial to small businesses as well : if you worked in sales, you must know how hard it is for a small business to make a presence in the market. These platforms give them a chance to outsource - of course at a price - their advertising and marketing. If they are indeed interested in a year-round viable accommodation business, directed at customers from all over the world, then these platforms save them the hassle involved in marketing themselves. Nothing new here, only the means have changed...

I've stayed at enough agriturismi to know that sites like Trip Advisor are quite hated by these small businesses - they detest the way that sites like these apparently judge them. OTOH, sites like these, and positive reviews posted there by guests, have made the existence of these small businesses known to a much greater audience. A double-edged sword.

Travel has become more accessible - for good and for bad - because of the multitude of choices, the fact that globalization has made things cheaper, and because people feel that the Internet has made travel more comfortable and easy. Money and comfort, as I have already mentioned, are two very dominant forces in the modern world.

 

[Pauline]

I actually did sleep on a park bench for one night in Geneva because everything in my price range was booked, but that was in 1972.

I sometimes leave a few nights not booked on a trip and find a hotel at the last minute, but I still use Booking.com because I can look at photos, see where they are on the map, and easily do a booking. I probably should just show up in the place and find a hotel, but that would take time driving around, trying to see which place we would like and I find it easier to do online.

I have never told someone they have to book everything ahead but if someone wants a certain type of vacation rental in a specific place, they may have to book months ahead. Things are easier in Italy now especially in the countryside because tourism has dropped off (those earthquakes) and places are not as booked up as they used to be.

It is interesting that sites like Booking.com do not accurately tell the number of rooms left. So if they say a hotel is sold out, it isn't? Why would the hotels want to do that? Or is it Booking.com deciding this?

 

[veronicafrance]

As far as Booking.com is concerned, I use it to identify potential hotels (usually days rather than weeks ahead). Then I hunt for the hotel's website or phone number and book direct. It won't be more expensive (may even be cheaper) and you get a more personal service.

 

[Chris]

Also, in my experience, any special requirements that you specify with booking.com don't get passed on to the hotel. I've requested a handicapped room for my mother more than once, had it "verified" by booking.com, and discovered when I got there that no such facilities were available.

 

[Sojourner]

Fair enough joe although I think if you spent some time looking at Lonely Planet's Thorntree Forum you would see there are a lot of young people who book ahead for everything. Not many from what I have seen are prepared to just wing it. They book hostels months in advance just like more affluent travellers book hotels etc.

Ian, I can understand someone suffering from anxiety if things aren't booked ahead. My wife was the same the first time I took her to Europe with no bookings. All her travel before that had been pre-booked. But all it took to make her into a convert for winging it was when we were in one place and she said, 'I wish we could stay here a few more days' and I just went to reception and added a few more nights onto our stay. Now you can't get her to pre-book anything. She wants that flexibility to stay or go as she pleases. Her comfort zone grew a great deal on that trip.

Pauline, re, '2 rooms left'. Many of the third party sites use that ploy and it is indeed an obvious ploy to try and get you to book right now. What it actually refers to and to be fair, some third party sites do say, is, 'WE have only 2 rooms left'. A hotel will allocate a certain number of rooms as available to third party sites for a given price. It does not mean all their rooms therefore will be gone, it just means those allocated rooms will be gone. Even if they state it is what they have available, it tells you nothing about what the hotel has available.

So if you like a hotel that you see on a booking site but it says no rooms available for the nights you want, all it takes is a phone call to determine if rooms are available. Never believe third party sites. They lie. They've even been taken to task about it this year in Europe. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-844_en.htm

It is not just a question of what price you will pay, but what you will GET for the price you pay. For example, all rooms are not the same no matter what anyone tries to tell you. Some are bigger, some are on a corner with 2 windows, some are right next to the ice machine or elevator with the attendant noises, etc. Guess which rooms third party bookers get vs. those who book directly with the hotel.

Common sense should tell anyone that if a hotel has to pay a booking site 15-20% of the room price, there is room there for a savvy traveller to negotiate with the hotel directly. I never use booking sites and always phone and speak to someone live or speak to the person at the front desk. Amazing what an actual conversation with a person can do.

I actually conducted an experiment once when on a road trip in the USA a couple of years ago. I laid out a route on a map and then about 6 weeks before going, I checked the price for various hotels along the route as shown on 3 well known booking sites and the hotels' own online booking sites. I booked nothing of course but wrote all the prices down.

Then as I travelled along, when I picked a place to stop, I went to one of the hotels on my list and booked in at reception. Before checking in however I re-checked the 3 booking sites and the hotels own booking site to see the prices they were showing for that night. I did this for 9 stops on that trip and in every single case, I got a lower price at the front desk than any of the online prices I had seen in advance or online on the day. Every single time.

That's because I negotiated a price at the front desk in person. People may find online booking convenient but believe me the traveller is paying for that convenience in one or more ways.

 

[joe]

Fair enough joe although I think if you spent some time looking at Lonely Planet's Thorntree Forum you would see there are a lot of young people who book ahead for everything. Not many from what I have seen are prepared to just wing it. They book hostels months in advance just like more affluent travellers book hotels etc.

That could be, Sojourner - I guess it depends on what we define as "young people", and also their cultural mindset. Over here, a trip abroad has become almost a standard pastime for young people before or after their army service (ages 18-21) - and after a few years of being told what and how to do everything (after secondary school, and after their stint in the service), they are quite happy about doing away with planning for a while.

We sometimes get WWOOFers from abroad over here on our farm as well, and I get the impression that at least half have adopted what you call the "winging it" approach : pretty care-free, not really having any planning worries. It's true that part of them are also quite obsessive about their planning. It would make interesting anthropological research to check what factors influence the "planning" dimension of travel culture (for any age): I'd wager that personality type is the dominant one.
I suppose there is research about this out there somewhere...

So if you like a hotel that you see on a booking site but it says no rooms available for the nights you want, all it takes is a phone call to determine if rooms are available. Never believe third party sites. They lie. They've even been taken to task about it this year in Europe. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-844_en.htm

Thanks for this - nice (but depressing) to see some real numbers from what I believe is a reliable source. Pretty pathetic situation (thirty percent of the prices appearing on booking sites are not correct), but at least in the majority of the cases this does not happen.
Remember that it is also possible to get tricked even if you book directly.

On a personal note - and taking into account my "personality type" factor - I can only say that searching for an accommodation with a vacancy at the end of a day of touring is not my idea of time well spent. And it's not that I haven't had experience with this. I simply don't enjoy it, and much prefer to spend the time doing almost anything else.
So all accommodations are booked well in advance and directly with the owners (we usually even return to the same accommodations, because of the good relationship we've established with them). In the cities, AirBnB take their cut, but I am still directly contacting the owners of the rental.

 

[Sojourner]

I keep forgetting you are in Israel joe. It's your name that throws me off. A 'joe' to me is an American. Not even a Canadian, Australian or Brit, an automatic American even though I'm sure there are plenty of Joe's here in Canada, I don't seem to know even one or have ever met one here. Maybe there could be an anthropological study in that. 'The relationship between given names and assumed nationality.' Ishmael for example is an automatic Israeli to me even though I'm sure there are Canadian Ishmael's as well.

Moving on, your description of what many Israeli younger people do after military service is no doubt correct but it applies only to them. Whereas if you look at the Thorntree, you find all nationalities and many of them plan everything. So, your view from your world will differ from what your view might be if you spent time on Thorntree.

For 'outsiders' from Israel, you are using WWOOFers to form an opinion. Again, a specific group of people. Those who are attracted to WWOOFing though are a minority of those young people who go on a 'Gap Year' type trip. Many Gap Yearers from N. America, Australia and Britain for example are all about buying a 'Round The World' air ticket and planning designated routes using that ticket. So not much winging it really for them obviously.

I agree that personality is a factor but so is the 'herd instinct'. What people did when I was in my late teens and 20s differs tremendously from what young people do today. When I went off on my first long term trip, I had $600, a one way ticket to London, no travel insurance and no plans beyond that first flight and all communication during my year less one week that I was away, was by snail mail. Ask anyone under 40 what Poste Restante means and you are likely to get a blank look. Ask anyone who travelled internationally for longer periods of time in the 70s and they are likely to know the answer. There was also no such thing as 'backpackers' for instance. We were simply 'travellers' if we referred to ourselves as anything at all.

Today, they all have insurance, most have a pretty (to me) detailed plan, insurance and go into a panic if they cannot contact everyone on their Facebook page at any given moment in time. They spend more time posting selfies than they do actually looking around at where they are. 'Here's me in front of the Eiffel Tower'. As if the person looking at the picture couldn't figure that out, they have to spell it out for them. Maybe they think the person looking at the picture won't recognize the Eiffel Tower.

About looking for a room at the end of the day. Whenever people discuss this who come from a preference of planning ahead and want to tell me why they don't like the idea of winging it, there are assumptions they make. One is the 'not time well spent' as you describe it.

If you read what I wrote earlier about finding a room in France, would you say that was not 'time well spent'? It gave me an insight into how people in different countries value their own time. That hotel owner did not put business before spending time with his family. I did not 'waste' my time looking for a hotel room, I sat and enjoyed watching the ducks on the river, having a nice lunch and glass of wine, began an acquaintance with the restaurant owner and learned about some cultural norms in a small French town.

There is this idea that if you have nothing booked, you must be walking around from hotel to hotel for hours to find a room and 'wasting time' doing so. But the reality is if you are someone who prefers to wing it, you learn how to wing it and you do not 'waste' time doing so. No one wants to waste time. Why would I do anything that I considered a waste of time any more than you would? There are many ways to go about winging it and not 'waste time'.

A winger might choose to travel with their bed. Its called a VW campervan or RV. Where do they waste any time finding a bed? You waste more time than they do, they just pull over at the side of a back road or in a parking lot and climb into bed. The point is, that no reason a planner gives for why winging it wastes time, applies to a person who wings it. The planner sees the objections only from their own perspective and how they use their own time.

My biggest reason for preferring winging it, is flexibility. I find it totally unreasonable to read that, "all accommodations are booked well in advance". (Unless it is a one stop trip.) Tell me this. How do you know how long a place will hold your interest for? How do you know if 3 nights will be enough or if 7 nights will be too much? The only truthful answer is that you don't. You give it your best guess but it is still just a guess. I don't guess at how long I will want to stay. I stay till I am ready to leave, every time. No more, no less. It is impossible to to achieve that with pre-planning. There will be times when you will stay too long or too short a time. Who is wasting time then?

I look at travel as freedom. The freedom to get up each morning and ask myself, 'so what do I want to do today?' I'm free to stay or move on as I please. For people who work, going on vacation is supposedly about getting away from everyday responsibilities and things they 'must do' that require them to schedule their time in their everyday lives. Yet from my perspective, what many people do is give up that freedom before they even start, by scheduling their vacation time just as they schedule their time at home! How does that make any sense? I have no 'must' when I travel, I just do what I want each day. Planners do what their schedule tells them they must do.

Flexibility can come in degrees. Someone can say, well I don't plan every hour of my day, I leave myself flexibility to do what I want in that day. That is indeed flexibility but consider this. Suppose during your day you decide to stop and sit at a sidewalk cafe and enjoy a glass of wine and take in the view. You get into a conversation with someone sitting at another table. You discover you are 'fellow travellers'. That is, not locals but visitors on vacation. Your fellow traveller then mentions to you that s/he is travelling in a VW Campervan and is leaving for Pamplona tomorrow morning for the Running of the Bulls and looking for someone to share fuel costs etc. and share the campervan including in Pamplona.

I use this example because I actually heard such a conversation once in the south of France. You reply, 'oh, I would so love to do that but I can't. I have 2 more nights here and then a reservation this Thursday for a week in Rome that I booked ahead.' Yes, I actually heard a version of that joe.

So here is this young, single person with not a care in the world, off spending a summer in Europe and saying, 'I can't', to an opportunity that is hardly likely to present itself again. So the opportunity is lost because a hostel was pre-booked. Rome will still be there next year or 10 years from now. That opportunity is gone forever. Itineraries put blinders on people to opportunities. The person uses the word 'can't' because of it. Who do you suppose was free to take that opportunity? The person without a plan obviously. People with plans and pre-bookings can actually change their plans but most never do. They automatically think 'can't' because of their plan.

 

[joe]

About looking for a room at the end of the day....
If you read what I wrote earlier about finding a room in France, would you say that was not 'time well spent'? It gave me an insight into how people in different countries value their own time. That hotel owner did not put business before spending time with his family. I did not 'waste' my time looking for a hotel room, I sat and enjoyed watching the ducks on the river, having a nice lunch and glass of wine, began an acquaintance with the restaurant owner and learned about some cultural norms in a small French town.

There is this idea that if you have nothing booked, you must be walking around from hotel to hotel for hours to find a room and 'wasting time' doing so. But the reality is if you are someone who prefers to wing it, you learn how to wing it and you do not 'waste' time doing so... Why would I do anything that I considered a waste of time any more than you would? There are many ways to go about winging it and not 'waste time'.

Sojourner, you use the words "waste of time", even with quotation marks - but I did not use those words. I said that for me, looking for an accommodation at the end of the day is not enjoyable, and that I can think of better ways to spend my time. It would not be a "waste" of my time to do this (if I didn't have a place to sleep that night then it definitely would not be a waste of time), it's just that if I have to choose between doing that and almost anything else while traveling - then that is one of the things that I least of all like to do.

You seem to be a bit exclusionary in your ideas of what "proper" travel is, or what constitutes the true spirit of travel. I understand your viewpoints on this completely - you have adopted a mode, or culture, of travel that fits you like a glove, and has inherent benefits for you. You have arrived at this through rich experiences and lengthy travel, with an emphasis on freedom of choice. But others have different cultures of travel - you might see them as worse, but the truth is that they're only worse for you. There is no such thing as an absolute spirit of travel, just like there is no such thing as absolute morality.

Here's a personal example that might show you how we both might ultimately share a similar travel experience, which we both regard as "true" to our spirit of travel, but the ways we got there are different :

Our first trip to Italy was in 2008. I was 50 then, and believe it or not, this was the first time I had traveled to a foreign country as an adult, and the first time I had to plan on my own. My only previous experience was accompanying my parents on a trip to France when I was 14. Now I had a wife and two daughters to think about.

I decided that I would research as much as I could - this was a completely personal decision, based on the type of person I am. I discovered the Slow Travel forum (the "matriarch" of this Slow Europe forum), sat for hours on the Internet, bought a book and a map. Planning...
I read reviews on the ST forum - yes, the same type of reviews which you claim are mostly suspect - and checked websites of agriturismi and reviews of them. Continued to read more about markets, parks, landmarks, hiking routes, buildings, gastronomy - anything that I thought would be interesting to fit into a trip like this. More planning. "Winging it" was not even considered (at least not for more than a few hours a day)...

In one case, I booked an agriturismo (about six months in advance!) which was "recommended" by reviewers and caught my eye, as a base for touring the vicinity of that area. The place was a working farm.
The evening we arrived, the woman came to greet us and we had a pleasant chat with her. At some point I asked where the husband is, and she said that he was still working out in the greenhouse.
I left them and went to meet the husband. He was separating the leaves and twigs from the olives he had collected that day. After introductions, I took a place beside him and started to help. We worked there for about an hour and a half, all the time discussing whatever we liked. At some point an acquaintance of his dropped by for a few minutes, and after he left, my host told me about this guy as well - how he had fenced off an area up in the mountains at a huge expense, in order to harvest the wild mushrooms there when in season.

The next day I had "plans" - the bane of all travel - and we had a really lovely day.

When we got back in the evening, I asked our host what he was doing the next day. He said that he was going to do another round of olive harvesting, and I asked if I could join him. He said sure.
The way he does this is that he waits for the olives to fall by themselves on the ground, onto nets that he has spread beforehand under the trees, and then every few days he collects what has fallen into big burlap sacks. The trees grow on fairly steep terraces, and he has to carry these bags on his shoulder down the terraces, to the closest he can get with his small work cart.
So I joined him for about two hours. I'm used to physical work, but believe me - carrying 25-30 kgs. of olives on your shoulder while going down a terrace was border-line for me. This guy is even a bit older than me, and does this daily for the whole harvest.

After that, my wife and I continued with our other plans - and had another really great day!

Fast forward to 2016. I am planning our third trip to this area, and want to book at this agriturismo again. We have stayed a bit in contact since our original stay - "Happy New Year" and "how are things going" - and I ask if he has a vacancy on the dates we are considering. He says that they will be at a new farm that they are buying, and he wants us to come for free, as their guests. I say no way without paying, and if that's what he'd like, then my wife and I will work on the days we'll be there. He says no need, that we are like friends. In the end, under my insistence, he gives his consent that I work - but I know that he's just saying that to make us come.

We start our trip, and it turns out that he hasn't finalized all the bureaucracy involved with the new acquisition - lawyers, lawyers - so we won't be able to stay there, but of course we go and meet them anyhow. They take us to show us around the new farm. He takes me for a trip to the nursery in town to buy new saplings for the vegetable plots that he maintains - he markets his vegetables and produce twice a week in the nearby city.
They take us for a trip up in the mountains in their car, and take us for a meal at good friends of theirs who also have an agriturismo and an amazing restaurant. Everything is at their expense. We get to know their friends as well.

Where did we stay those two nights that were planned to be at this farm, but it didn't work out? I took my wife's smartphone, checked the AirBnB website - another paragon of evil - and in an hour I had booked two nights at a nice apartment in a small village nearby.

While reminiscing about our previous visit, I asked this host about the guy who had invested a small fortune in fencing off part of the mountain for its mushrooms. He told me the venture completely failed, because the fence had changed the ecology of the mountain, and the amount of mushrooms started to dwindle. This host is fiercely organic/ecological (even more than me...) - so we had a good laugh about that...

So you see, Sojourner : both you and I have enjoyed what we see as the essence of travel. Seeing new places, meeting new people, grasping opportunities, enriching lives. We just did it differently. Was I sorry to leave these people, both in 2008 and in 2016? Sure I was! I was sorry about all the places we had to leave, both before them and after them. Was I happy to get back home? Sure I was. That's called finding the balance between all your wishes. It's just that we all do it in different ways.

 

[Sojourner]

Umm, my comment was"would you say that was time well spent" and yes I also wrote, "I did not 'waste' my time". But wasted is the other side of the well spent coin isn't it? Time is spent 'well' or 'poorly' (wasted).

I don't object to anyone who chooses to plan travel. But let's go back to the start of this thread by Mooph and his comment that, "Thus far I'm heartsick at the prospects of places being so booked up ahead that my old lackadaisical meet-through-who's-available-tonight-via-afternoon-phonecall whimsy is just way too yesterday."

That is the remark that I am trying to address. That is why I wrote, "I think that those who have an interest in travel to the point of participating in travel forums and wanting to share information on travel, should be spreading the word (especially to younger people) that there is a choice of how you travel in terms of finding a bed."

Not to say one way is better than another or to say I prefer one way or someone else prefers the other way but to simply say the choice exists.

Even when writing what appears to be a simple sentence, words creep in. For example, "I have never told someone they have to book everything ahead but if someone wants a certain type of vacation rental in a specific place, they may have to book months ahead."

See that word 'but', what does it imply? Does it say that Mooph should disregard what he has been led to believe in terms of, "the prospects of places being so booked up ahead that my old lackadaisical meet-through-who's-available-tonight-via-afternoon-phonecall whimsy is just way too yesterday.", or does it reinforce what he has been led to believe? I say it reinforces it just as soon as that word 'but' entered the sentence.

It does not say, both ways work equally. It says winging it may not work sometimes. I'm sure Pauline didn't mean to say to Mooph, don't wing it. But she implied it might not work out. I disagree, it works every time. But people can't help but add those next words starting with 'but' that show their own preference. I'm no different. Tell me you are planning time and I'll say, you can do as you please but be aware you are giving up flexibility. I imply planning is not as good as winging it. No difference.

I'm just saying we should simply tell people there is a choice and both work. End of sentence.

So, moving on, regarding the 'essence of travel'. I agree there are many ways to achieve that if someone can define what it means for themselves. Your story is a great story of doing so. I think a good thread could be started by someone on the topic of what is the essence of travel.

I like this take on the subject and how the writer relates it to 'likes'. Noticed how even travel forums (including this one) allow people to give 'likes'. Does the purpose then become to collect likes? Apparently, it does for some.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/lloyd-n-e...l-media-is-changing-the-essence-of-traveling/

There is a movie that along with other things, does cover a view of the essence of travel.
https://bkpk.me/the-motorcycle-diares-the-essence-of-travel/

 

[joe]

I'm just saying we should simply tell people there is a choice and both work. End of sentence.

I couldn't agree with you more : those among us who are aware of alternatives - in any field - should make them known to those who are unaware of them. We have to also remember that you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...

So, moving on, regarding the 'essence of travel'. I agree there are many ways to achieve that if someone can define what it means for themselves. Your story is a great story of doing so. I think a good thread could be started by someone on the topic of what is the essence of travel.

That's a good idea - and I think you're the right person to start one.
We've sort of hijacked this thread, so IAC we better take our powwow elsewhere!

FWIW, the article from Thought Catalog didn't impress me too much - pretty much stated the obvious to me.
I admit I still have to see Motorcycle Diaries.

 

[Pauline]

It does not say, both ways work equally. It says winging it may not work sometimes. I'm sure Pauline didn't mean to say to Mooph, don't wing it. But she implied it might not work out. I disagree, it works every time. But people can't help but add those next words starting with 'but' that show their own preference. I'm no different. Tell me you are planning time and I'll say, you can do as you please but be aware you are giving up flexibility. I imply planning is not as good as winging it. No difference.

I meant that not booking ahead works fine (as you have pointed out) for hotels and B&Bs, BUT not for vacation rentals/holiday rentals/self catering IMO. These are usually booked by the week, Saturday to Saturday in most places, and are not as easy to find and book at the last minute. If an owner does not have the place booked, they are not necessarily waiting around to see if someone shows up.