SPECIAL APARTMENTS

As you are well aware: Eyjafjallajokull, the Iceland volcano that erupted this week has caused havoc, with all flights to and from Europe being canceled.

We have been asked by many of our guests what we would do in these exceptional circumstances and if we will reimburse our clients for their prospected stay in one of our apartments.

This, is as one can well imagine a very delicate situation for us: If we reimburse everyone that could not come at such short notice (and contrary to our cancellation policy) we will suffer great financial difficulty in already extremely hard times. Even the airlines are considering taking their countries to court if  they do not get compensation for being grounded. We are not in such a powerful position, so money that we would reimburse would just be entirely lost. Unfortunately we would not be able to handle this financially, whilst continuing to offer the same kind of service that people have come to expect from us and our survival would be placed in jeopardy.

We ourselves pay rent for the apartments that we offer, not working on a commission basis as many other agencies do. This guaranties exclusivity of the majority of our apartments and a certain standard, but puts the risk factor on a much higher level, whether high season or low, economic crisis or natural catastrophes….

On the other hand we believe that we should make a gesture and try to help out in some way, so after careful consideration we have decided the following:

Anybody that reserved an apartment with Special Apartments and was not able to come because of the volcano incident will be awarded high reductions for a stay of the same length over the next year*.

A 20% reduction on normal prices for a future stay during high season (From now until July 15th 2010, 25th August-31st October 2010 and March 15th- 30th April 2011) For stays over the Christmas/New year Holidays (15th December 2010 - 5th January 2011) there is normally a 20% surcharge this will be wavered for this offer, so the price will be as at other times of year.

A 30% reduction on normal prices for a future stay during Low season (From July 15th- 25th August 2010, 31st October-15th December 2010 and 5th January-March 15th 2011)

This offer cannot be associated with any other special offers (last minute or timesavers) and only concerns the same number of days as the original booking. Any additional dates will be charge at normal rates. If not all the dates are used, the dates that are left may still be used for another stay before the expiry date of the offer (30th April 2011).  Extra services will not be offered at a reduced rate.

Additionally, any extra services that were ordered (museum passes, shuttles, baby cots, grocery shopping etc.) will be reimbursed immediately to the same credit card that was used to make the original booking.

For clients who arrive a few days late for their stay, we will try to arrange that they can stay for some extra days at the end on a case by case basis.

We hope that this will alleviate in some way the losses and disappointment that this situation has caused.

*Offer ends 30th April 2011

We’re very proud of our Guest relations officer Hugh Yates, who has been training very keenly for the last few months to run the Paris Marathon on the 11th April.

Here is a note from him

On the 11th April I will be pounding the Parisian pavements (je trottinerai les trottoirs parisiens) for 42km (it sounds way further in metric). I shall be running in aid of the Ellen MacArthur trust, a charity set up to encourage young people who have suffered from cancer to get their lives going again by introducing them to sailing.

I am doing this in memory of my brother Will, who was a very keen sailor (and general all-round Francophile), and would have really approved of the charity and its work.

I haven’t set a target for donations (or for my finishing time) so please just give what you can.

Thanks very much,

Hugh

And here’s the link to give a donation for a great cause! Click here

We’ve just had some great articles on a couple of great sites on the internet !

The first one coming from Swell City Guide features one of our new luxury two-bedroom apartments situated near the Opera Garnier (reference #009), which you can check out by clicking here . We think that Swell City Guide is pretty cool too, with lots of info about quite a few cities in the world.

The second Article is on a well-known site for the gay community in Germany, who wrote a great article on our service (in German), highlighting a few of our apartments, which you can read by clicking here

If you want to offer an unusual and unique gift for Christmas (or any other occasion for that matter) this year, why not consider a gift voucher from Special Apartments Paris?

We can send you a A4 sized  card/voucher with the amount that you would like to spend (valid for one year) ,that you can print at home and give to your loved one. Simply fold the card to make a greeting card, that you can personalize inside.

A facsimile of one of the special apartments gift vouchers

Special Apartments Gift voucher insert.

All they have to do is give the reference number and the name of the person who gave the gift, in order to exchange their voucher for a stay in one of our apartments.*

*Valid one year from the date of emission.

For more information contact john@specialapartments.com

Walking to the office this morning 17th December 2009

Its snowing this morning in Paris! Snow just changes everything, something romantic about it; sounds are different, the light is different……Realy feels like Christmas is coming! I took some pictures to share.

View from the office of Special Apartments Paris

We’ve just photographed three of our apartments again!

We photographed Reference #039, because we had the 50′ vintage armchair re-upholstered in a beautiful turquoise wool fabric and put up some new photographic artwork in the bedroom. Its a great apartment in a very popular area with the fashion/art crowd and there is a great food market just around the corner.

We hadn’t had a chance to take proper photos of the apartment reference #028 that we renovated recently, because it has been fully-booked since we started renting it out a few months ago. The photos that we had, showed the apartment before it was completely finished. There is still some artwork to go there and a chair for the desk, which are all arriving in the next few days. We will keep you posted.

At Reference #004, in the Marais area of Paris, we recently added a new very good sofa-bed from Steiner. It has a good mattress, unlike many sofa-beds. We also changed the table and chairs (Bertoia) and put some new photographic artwork on the walls. We hope you like it!

We’ve just created an account on Skype, for those of you who would like to talk with someone directly. Do feel free to add us!

Our user name is specialapartments

If you don’t have a Skype account, you can, of course contact us by telephone during working hours at +33 1 77 32 12 15

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

To continue in our quest to go green and to harm the planet the least bit possible, we are trying to find an ecolo-friendly printer in the Paris area. We have to print business cards, compliments cards and have also a project to print a series of postcards that we will give to our guests when they arrive.

Today we had a meeting with the first of these called ‘impression durable’. We will wait for there feedback. We are also considering working with ‘gecys’ and a few others. I’ll keep you posted.

We’re looking at ways to go green at the moment. As a company, we feel that it is important to do our bit to make our ecological footprint as small as possible. All of our apartments are equipped with our own white bed linens and towels, and the traditional products that are needed to keep them white are very polluting.

The first thing we’ve decided to do is to look for green cleaning products, that are effective and non-polluting.

By looking on the website run by the European Ecolabel I came across a belgian company called Christeyns who manufacture environmentally-friendly detergents and have developped sytems to economize water, with dosage systems to make sure that the correct quantities of detergents are used, whilst giving good results.

On Friday Regis and I have a meeting with the representative of the company and their Paris distributor to discuss the options that we could use.

Hopefully this small step will be the first on the long road to becoming more responsable for our environment. I’ll keep you posted on any new developments!

One of our guests who stayed with us recently was tempted by the idea of acquiring her own apartment in Paris. She has found an apartment in the Marais and asked us to check it out and maybe help her out with the administrative side, with a view to managing the apartment. So at 1:30 today Régis and John have an appointment with the real estate agent to look at the apartment and see if it is suitable for us to take on.