HOSPITALITY French renaissance
Luxury Asian hotel brands are moving into the Parisian market and the city's existing hotels are also gearing up for a mini revolution in style, service and cuisine. Julie Cramer reports
F
aced with the need to modernise in an increas- ingly global marketplace, many of the French cap- ital’s most prominent
‘grand hotels’ – Le Crillon, Le Meurice, Hotel Le Bristol and the Four Seasons George V to name a few – have been ploughing hundreds of millions of euros into upgrading their offers, employing cutting edge interior design- ers (the avant-garde stamp of Philippe Starck can be seen at Le Meurice and Le Royal Monceau), increasing room capacity, modernising food offers and incorporating the latest spa brands and fitness centres. The recent arrival of many high-qual-
ity, globally-recognised Asian brands into a long-established Parisian market (according to French tourism office fig- ures, 77 per cent of Parisian hotels in 2010 were still independently-owned) has done much to speed up this proc- ess of modernisation – so much so that the city’s hotel landscape is cur- rently experiencing a period of rapid change and diversification. In October 2010, the Singapore- based Raffles Group opened the
fashionable Le Royal Monceau, after an extensive €69m refurbishment. Hot on its heels, the Hong-Kong-based Shangri-La group made its foray into the French market with the opening of site near the Eiffel Tower. In June 2011, it was the turn of Mandarin Oriental to unveil its 130-room hotel near the Louvre, with beautiful Art Deco interiors. Scheduled to open in 2012 is a 200-room hotel from the Peninsula Group, which will be housed in a building formerly owned by the French Foreign Ministry - representing the first entry into Europe for this lead- ing Asian brand.
Expected to be completed by 2013, the capital’s well known La Samaritaine department store is due to be transformed into a mixed-use development by Japanese firm SANAA, and will include an 80-room hotel. Jean Pierre Courteau, managing
director of A Tout France (the French tourism administration) for the UK and Ireland says: “It’s a healthy sign for the market since these [Asian] brands carry a certain prestige and their foray into France shows trust and confi- dence in our tourism industry.”
PALACE ASPIRATIONS French tourism chiefs have also made significant moves to overhaul the coun- try’s system of hotel categorisation. Courteau says: “The hotel classifica- tion system was last reviewed in 1986 in France. Obviously it had become extremely outdated and expectations have changed considerably. “Tourists will now base decisions on whether the accommodation provides wi-fi access or plasma screen TVs with satellite channels, which they evidently wouldn’t have done in the 80s or 90s. “There was actually no official five- star rating in France, even though it was claimed by around 60 hotels in the country, which put us on the back foot on the international stage.” At the top of the tree is the new ‘Palace' hotel distinction, which puts a select number of hotels in a league apart from the 5-stars. The selec- tion criteria includes having luxury spa facilities, a minimum double room size of 30sq m, concierge service, multi-lin- gual staff and yearly investment into the establishment. Courteau adds: “Other factors encompass everything from design to continued on p58
GRAND RESTORATION AT SHANGRI-LA HOTEL PARIS
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts opened its first property in Europe – the Shangri-La Hotel, Paris – in the 16th arrondissement in December 2010. Built in 1896 as the private home of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s grand- nephew, Prince Roland Bonaparte, the 81-room site is a more boutique ver- sion of the group’s other hotels. The hotel has clear views of the
The suites have a classic French style (above); The hotel's L'Abeille restaurant (far right)
Eiffel Tower and river Seine (40 per cent of rooms, and 60 per cent of
56 Read Leisure Management online
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