A really warm greeting from the Sunny South of France – 44 degrees warm today.

After a few months of hard work on our new Internet project, including patent applications, starting some app developments, websites and business planning – I need a holiday in the South of France (I know just the place).

Just a couple of quick notes in this mail.

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I had a call from Jacqueline, an assistant producer of the ITV series “May the best House Win” asking for owners in Brittany who would like to be considered for the TV series.

Here is her note to me – contact Jacqueline direct if you are interested …..

We are currently casting for the fifth series of the hugely popular ITV1 daytime show ‘May The Best House Win’. For part of this series we’ll be heading across the channel and filming in France. I am casting for Brittany only.

The series features interesting homes that have been lovingly created by their owners, real passion projects and properties that are distinctive and express their owners personality, whether it’s people who live in interesting conversions, fascinating period properties, or who have filled their home with fascinating objects or artifacts, or decorated in a particular theme. Anything goes – so long as the homeowners really love their home.
In each episode we will feature 4 very different houses in a particular area. We will ask the homeowners to visit each of the other houses and award them marks out of ten. The winning homeowner wins 1000 Euros. It’s a fun show designed to bring together people with different tastes and different properties to discuss and debate their own ideas of what makes a home.
As discussed, we (myself and my Researcher) are coming to  Brittany to film next week. I was keen to see if you or anyone you know might be interested in taking part .
I would be very grateful if you could pass this message and flyer on to any relevant people and ask them to get in touch ideally in the next couple of days if they would like to have a chat.
My direct line is 0044 207 157 4879.
Kind regards
Jacqueline

Jacqueline Paul | Assistant Producer  | ITV plc
0044 (0) 207 157 4879
ITV plc Head Office Tel +44 (0) 20 7157 3000 itv.com

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Another important issue which I was involved in a few years ago is the short-term rental of apartments in major cities, including Paris and San Francisco.

It is a simple fact that many (if not most) of the vacation and short-term business rentals in many cities are rented illegally. The fan got hit by goodness knows what when http://airbnb.com held a press conference and dinner in a San Francisco apartment last week and found out that the place they were using and renting was illegal – this was pointed put to them by the press at the dining table with them. Even worse, it seem that one of the founders of the company was offering their own place for rent, illegally.

The problem is that most owners and all renters do not know that major cities around the world have statutes which make renting for short duration illegal. In Paris this has been law since the 1970s, but, up ’till now, has been ignored by everyone, including the city council. But not for much longer it seems.

Cities and governments like to get taxes, the Internet makes it easy now for them to trace and calculate all rentals and some hefty tax bills are likely to appear, but my main concern has always been the safety aspect. If a rental is illegal then no insurance company will pay out in the event of a serious incident. This could mean an owner being sued for any accident or loss – worse still the renter and the agency arranging the rental would also then be liable for any losses. In Paris I know there are over 38,000 apartments which are illegally offered for rental – I also know that the city of Paris knows who they are.

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It’s a red letter day for me, I registered a patent today – it is for “Object Compounding Applied to Information Retrieval from Database or Other Search Related Services” – the last patent I registered (and was awarded) was in 1973, I’ve got a few more up my sleeve at present so hopefully it will not be another 40 years before I register the next one.

This is all for the new partnership for owners and travelers we are building, you can see our outlines at http://wikibnb.org  – it is not just B&B owners, but an open partnership for all owners and all travelers as there are over one billion travelers next year and 5 million private owners, we better issue a lot of shares? Come and join us 🙂

Hope to see you in the sunny South of France one day soon

best wishes

Tony