A GLASGOW-based couple who launched a business to offer luxury accommodation to skiers in the French resort of Morzine have surpassed their year one target with revenue expected to climb further during the summer season.
Finlay and Wendy Hunter launched Hunter Chalets & Apartments after gaining experience working in lodges across ski and safari resorts in Europe and Africa.
Their business in the popular Morzine resort covers the management of three properties, which are owned by private property investors based in London with whom the couple became acquainted while working as chalet hosts.
Occupancy rates across the properties were more than 70 per cent, well ahead of projections.
Mr Hunter said the majority of visitors to the chalets were from the UK, but there were also bookings from South Africa, Russia, Greece and Switzerland.
The winter season will finish in mid-April and the company has bookings this week which will add to turnover. A month’s break will see the couple recoup back in Glasgow before returning to Morzine for the summer season, when Mr Hunter said hiking and mountain biking were popular.
“We’re also speaking about taking on more properties for next year, but we have to ensure that the service we give is maintained, so we’re looking at small growth, the right growth,” he said.
Two properties are owned by one investor, and the couple took on a third chalet with another owner, having engineered a percentage deal in place of the standard method of owners taking a set rent from management firms up front before the season begins.
“That was a terrifying prospect, no matter how much self-belief we had,” said Mr Hunter. “What we agreed was obviously better for us, but the owners were keen to push the new properties, and they get a better return the busier we are.”
Ms Hunter added: “They’re partners, really. They provide what we need to make the properties what we need them to be.”
Hunter Chalets & Apartments is registered in the UK with a French branch – and its accounts are reported in both countries.
The couple invested their own savings in getting the business off the ground, and did not have to seek outward investment, developing their business plan while working in Africa ahead of moving to Morzine.
Mr Hunter added that management could one day become ownership: “There is scope, if we make money – which we hope to do – that we would put a percentage in a property with others.”
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