“People handle situations in life differently. When it storms some people search for a calm safe harbor and some people set sails and sail away towards something new and try to make the best out of the situation. I am the type that set sails. When I lost my job 2014 we decided to make the move to France and start our bed & breakfast. I moved by myself at first since Micke, my husband, still had his job in Sweden and we needed an income. So, I was in a new country, with a new language with no network to start with. It was both good and bad. Sometimes it was nice to be on my own and sometimes it was very hard. I remember one low point when we had a legal dispute with a craftsman and I needed to handle the whole process by myself in French. We now run La Belle Vue together and we are a really good team. I am a the entrepreneur and Micke, as a former elite athlete, is really good at setting goals and milestones. I think it is impossible to do something like this without goals. You need more than a vision. You have to break it down into several goals and milestones. Not to complicated. Like, where do you want to be seen and who do you want to write about you. I set a goal to get 10 Instagram influencers and 5 bloggers to write about us and that succeeded. Last year we had the goal to increase the business by 50%. I thought it was to much but Micke believed we could make it. We ended up increasing by 120%. If we wouldn't have set a goal how would've been able to measure our progress and get the satisfaction of the accomplishment? We looked at what we needed to do and created several milestones. For instance, we divided our communication into three levels. Our loyal guests, The ones that are curious and asks about us on social media and the target group we want to reach out to. Last year we sent a bottle of wine to all guests that had been staying with us during the year. We have an ecological vineyard nearby that we work with a lot. We went there and packed our car full of wine bottles to send to the hundreds of guests. It was very appreciated and they really help us a lot. They are now our fans and advocates.”

Yvonne Tenninge 
Host since 2014, 6 units 
La Belle Vue, Neffiés, France
Photos by: Agnes Maltesdotter