ATN-Q Partner’s meeting Cyprus Contribution of ACTA Informatique Emmanuel LE MEUR – Rémy COFFION – Guy WAKSMAN

ACTA Informatique contribution Communication in the weekly newsletters EFITA (in english) and liste AFIA (in french), Search of prospects in the area of agrotourism in France Beginning the translation of delivrables

The french prospects Tourism Commitee of Orne Department (Normandy) : M. Poisson OCACIA (Certification Organisation in rural area) : Mrs Poudre « Bienvenue à la Ferme » with  Agricultural Chamber of Gironde (near Bordeaux) : M.Lafon  Agricultural Chamber of Orne (Normandy) : Mrs Legendre  APCA : Mrs Bigourdan

Main points of the meeting with M.Poisson (TC Orne) Main motivations for Gites renting  Only 37% financial reasons  Mainly :  patrimonial (to keep and maintain familial property)  the desire to meet people (e.g. for ex-sellers who invest in the construction of farmhouses)  the willingness to offer an accommodation in addition to other activities (horse, etc.)

Main points of the meeting with M.Poisson (TC Orne) Main challenges :  Risk of trivializing the offer for example treehouses, trailers, etc.  Many owners don’t want to go through a central booking in order to « filter » the customers  No more than 5 rooms (unless is considered as an hotel)  Low fill rate (30%) versus 50-70% for the hotels  Need to review / renew the equipment for example : WiFi necessary

Main points of the meeting with M.Poisson (TC Orne) Conditions of rating in France  Official ranking system (« stars ») is treated separately from internal rankings (« épis », …)  The first one is not free (# 200 euros), inspected by certified organisms (ex. OCACIA) and approved by the local State Administration (« prefectures »)  For the second one, inspection and classification are services included in the cost of membership

Main points of the meeting with M.Poisson (TC Orne) Possible interests for EUAN  “Eurogîtes” experience suggests the difficulty and the lack of interest of a European approach: it is probably better for everyone to keep his fundamentals, and therefore to promote its own standards and brand policy.  Very hard to ask for an investment without close contacts with the French standardisation organisation (AFNOR)  What is the target group of EUAN ?  What is the originality of this offer in each national context?

Main points of the meeting with M.Poisson (TC Orne) Other networks may be interested in EUAN :  « Accueil paysan » : emphasizes the values of sustainable development :  « Atout France » : government network :  « Clévacances » : theme stays :  « Fleurs de soleil » : guest houses :

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Ocacia is an organisation specialized in  Certification (75%)  Inspection (10%)  Control (14%)  Training (1%)  in agriculture and rural area  and carrying on business

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Examples of training  GLOBALGAP : good practices in fruits, livestock farming, crop farming, …  HACCP : health and sanitary control  Red Label  Internal control  …

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Examples of activities  Council for Equines Languedoc-Roussillon : control of the specification  « Planète bleue » : environmental certification in horticulture : salon-vegetal-specialise-la-certification-environnementale- nouvelle-cle-d-acces-au-marche&fldSearch=:320TQZA9.htmlhttp:// salon-vegetal-specialise-la-certification-environnementale- nouvelle-cle-d-acces-au-marche&fldSearch=:320TQZA9.html  “Bleu Blanc Coeur – Porc de montagne” : pig breeding

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Procedure for the certification of the hotels  First contacts and information  Request for an inspection  Fullfilling of a « pre-diagnostic »  Control visit and fullfilling of the grid by OCACIA  Sending of the inspection report by OCACIA  The hotel musts then send a demand to the local State Administration (« prefecture »)  The prefecture decides of the rating (1 to 5 stars)

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Some « reserves » towards EUAN  Both for the inspections "in house" or simply by signing a charter of good practice, Ocacia doesn’t sees its place today in this market  Ocacia can’t consider the controls to match around both the "agricultural production" and agrotourism services. Audiences are too different.

Main points of the meeting with Mrs Poudre (OCACIA) Possible interests for EUAN  Ocacia has other strategic priorities for 2011 but could still be interested by this standard that should be brought to the attention of AFNOR.  The e-learning approach to EUAN is interesting because it looks like this one of GLOBALGAP :

Bienvenue à la ferme Still “on the run” : M. Lafon (Agricultural Chamber of Gironde) recommended to join the national structure (APCA). We had a phone contact with Mrs Bigourdan, but no further meeting was able to be planned for the time being.

Conclusions The contacts between ELOT and AFNOR could be very useful. In France, it’s too early to ask the partner to be engaged. We would need some concrete material to make demonstrations. It could be good to establish a ratio between « auto-diagnosis » and Chart agreement.