Bed and Breakfast in France

1 ► B&B in Brittany & Normandy Northwestern France, coast, countryside and a mild climate	4 ► B&B in Dordogne & southwest The southwest of France, sunshine, vineyards, and heritage
2 ► B&B in Loire valley & Burgundy Northern central France, famed for châteaux and vineyards	5 ► B&B in Mountain France   Uplands and mountains, fine scenery and open spaces - Massif Central, Alps, Jura
3 ► B&B from Flanders to Alsace The northeast regions, easily accessible from the UK, Benelux and Germany	6 ► B&B in the south of France Le Midi, Mediterranean France, history, sunshine, beaches and vineyards

Visitors... Find a B and B in France.

     On each directory page, you will find a choice of Bed and Breakfast accommodation in the region concerned. Many of the B and B's and small guest houses are English-owned or run by English-speaking or sometimes Dutch-speaking owners. The flags against each property in the directory show the language or languages in which the website is presented. When there is just a single flag, it tends also to indicate the language spoken by the owner.
     Accommodation on offer ranges from rooms in small country cottages to suites in manors or châteaux; but in all cases, they provide relaxing and comfortable accommodation, generally with a garden and often with a swimming-pool too. This directory does not knowingly list any B&B properties that are situated in noisy locations (next to a main road), nor B&Bs in characterless urban locations.
     Each B and B is presented in the directory through a brief description; click on the link, and you will be taken directly to the owner's individual website, or to their page on a booking site, providing full and detailed information about the accommodation, the number of rooms and capacity, the location, the amenities, as well as prices. Each website is illustrated with plenty of photos.

Booking your B&B in France

     To book your B&B, in most cases you will need to contact the owner directly - usually in English. Some sites provide online booking forms and payment by credit card, others will ask you to contact them by email. A deposit may be required in order to secure a reservation, but not all owners require this. Owners who do not take credit cards but require a deposit  may accept payment by UK cheque or by SEPA / IBAN transfer (very easy, can be done online). Some B&Bs offer online booking, with or without a credit card. This is often through a bookings site. Bookings sites accessible from Gitelink or BandB-in-France.com do not charge commission or agency fees to visitors; and even if you book through a bookings site, you will usually pay the b&b owner directly.

     Generally speaking, Bed and breakfast or guest house accommodation is - quality for quality - a cheaper option than staying in a hotel, and often a convivial way of meeting people in the place where you plan to spend a holiday or stop for an overnight break. Many B&Bs are to all intents and purposes small guest houses, that prefer not to register as hotels, since registering as a hotel entails a certain number of administrative formalities and constraints, and extra costs; but like small independent hotels, because they are small, they are places whose owners take pride in offering a good quality of service with a personal touch.

Tourist tax in France
     In many parts of France, B&B's, like any other type of accommodation, are obliged to levy a tourist tax or bed tax (in French taxe de séjour) on all overnight stays. Some establishments include the tourist tax in their rates, others may add it to the bill. But it will not make much of a difference to the price, since tourist tax is generally low, even symbolic, normally somewhere between  0€50 and 2€ per person per night, depending on the area. Whether or not to apply a tourist tax is a matter for local authorities in France, and it is local authorities that set the rates for their area.