Chambre d'hôtes

A chambre d'hôtes is slightly different from the Anglo-Saxon Bed and Breakfast. Indeed, at the origin, the B&B was developed in order to answer to the huge demand coming from those numerous tourists but also from businessmen and women who had to stay a few days in different places and could not afford the cost of a hotel. The B&B was also a means of supplementing ones' income. Today, this definition has changed and would be comparable to a chambre d'hôte but the "french chambre d'hôte" is really specific. Indeed, very often, the peculiarity but also the beauty of staying in a chambre d’hôte is that they are usually located in the heart of rural villages. The first objective of creating that type of "establishment" was to help the rural population & develop tourism in those villages more & more threatened by urbanism. It is, therefore, very frequent to be welcomed by the owners of the house with whom you will share their home & their breakfast. In Quebec, these chambres d'hôte are called "gites" whereas the gite in France have another meaning (simple holiday rentals). Nowadays, you will find numerous chambres d'hotes in the countryside but this phenomenon is growing and reaches the cities (in this case, they would be more similar to the B&B) and the coasts (similar to a vacation rental).