This actual business plan talk is of real importance.
So,
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, I took away from your last serving of the nitty gritty that a steady income from gites was more profitable than a B n B business. But you seem now to say gites alone are not enough, you think, to support a chateau? So, if I were interested in preserving the not-very-old or illustrious hunting lodge of the Fleuries -- or even their wonderful barns
@Gibson is not the only diehard fan of -- my best bet for keeping them standing for another 200 years would be gites and not events/B n B? What other business should I diversify into?
Honestly I think Anna could make more money giving wallpaper workshops once she's got studio space out there (indoor event, could she charge €2500 a pop, as much as Shrek and Fiona wanted to for their Disneybound cosplay workshops?). Phillip could do video workshops for the husbands. Don't know how profitable these are.
I keep going back to Dick and Angel, who repeatedly went over other chateau grifters' "business plans" -- pure
-- and told them that weddings are the only way to make the mortgage money. People tend not to flake on the date even if the weather is bad, etc. Plus I would guess the markup on cheap plonk and wildflowers is massive. (I have to say I FFd Edd and Anna in the new episode of Chateau DIY. She works so hard and he's such a pig.)
I don't know if Brexit is going to affect this British fantasy wedding business in France, which is offensive to me on several grounds having to do with plantation colonialism. If the grifter chateau owners did anything for the locals, or learned French, or directed their guests to buy at local French businesses, I'd be a little less grossed out by the whole vampire wedding business.
I keep thinking how a
worker cooperative laundry could work for the chateaux, organized and perhaps housed by the chatelaine, servicing local businesses and enriching its local worker-owners. Stuff like that. Rural France and the chateaux need real economic development plans -- what would work, all you business people? Fish farming? Workshops? George Sand [insert local French icon/hero] conferences? Digital download PDF wallpaper patterns or Tres Riches Heures needlepoint cell phone holder patterns?