Tips for making your Vendee holiday a success

Choosing your style of holiday

The terms that you will usually find on this and other holiday web sites for France are cottages, farmhouses, gites and villas. These are often interchangeable, but in general the term used tends to reflect the style of the self catering accommodation.

Holiday cottage – a holiday property, usually independent, small to medium size.
Farmhouse – a larger independent self catering property and/or indicating a rural setting or its former use.
Holiday gite – the a general word coming from French, meaning “shelter” or “accommodation”. Often used to cover all types of holiday letting accommodation in France, but particularly for specifically created or renovated units, either independent or as part of a holiday complex of several units.
Holiday villa – This generally indicates a modern holiday property, recently built and often refers to coastal holiday properties.

In all these cases the facilities may be for sole use of the property or there may be some facilities which are shared with one or more other holiday units (swimming pool, grounds, games room…). This is always clearly indicated in the property description.

Holiday Apartments – You can also consider taking an apartment on one of the holiday complexes in the Vendee area. These “residences” are mostly on the coast and offer a wide range of facilities and services on site or nearby (pools, fitness, spa, children’s clubs, play areas, laundry, etc.) making them an ideal choice for families with children or for hassle-free low season breaks.

Quality ratings – The overall quality of the accommodation in France is obviously to a certain extent subjective, but can be mostly gleaned from the photos of the property. For the cottages, gites and villas on our French holiday rentals web site, we examine the property and facilities to make sure that they offer the necessary standards. Some are of a higher quality and this is often reflected in the price (but note that cottages, gites and villas near the coast tend to be at a higher price as well). Many of those we feature will have been inspected and rated by the French organisation Atout-France (at a three-star or four-star level), however we make no reference to this in the description, preferring to establish our own judgement. Should you wish to know the official quality rating of a property on our website, just ask.