Rosewood Hotels & Resorts® has been appointed to manage the legendary Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. Rosewood is widely regarded as a leading ultra-luxury hotel company whose portfolio includes both contemporary classics and historic properties such as Rosewood London and The Carlyle, the quintessential New York hotel. Hôtel de Crillon is currently closed while it undergoes a complete restoration lasting two years and will reopen in 2015.
The French hotel industry experienced a difficult month in October, with rooms revenue generally down. While certain destinations managed to resist (regional hotel activity remained mostly stable, for instance), many cities saw a drop in trading. These included Paris, where hotel occupancy has been crumbling over the past few months. The capital's hotels are thus faced with an additional pressure. However, the high levels of occupancy in Paris do give the city's hoteliers the means to maintain ambitious pricing policies.
In a message from its communication agency to various publications, Booking.com denies being a greedy distributor who takes advantage of weak hoteliers in order to impose its own conditions. It attempts to restore a better image by rejecting 11 ideas. However, in doing so, it recognizes some practices alleged against it and avoids sensitive issues. The exercise deserves to be supplemented by answers to some additional questions....
Many hotel and tourism actors were banking on recovery from September onwards. Yet, although the month did not turn out too bad, since rooms revenue tended to remain stable compared to 2012, genuine recovery was, unfortunately, not on the cards. Several destinations such as Marseille, for instance, posted good performances, although the underlying trend did not indicate that recovery is round the corner. In short, September fell short of expectations.
This isn’t the first time that online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Bookings.com have been in hot water. Only last year a lawsuit was launched in the US accusing Expedia, Starwood Hotels and InterContinental Hotel Group of price fixing. This time, it’s the French-based Union de Métiers et des Industries de l’Hôtellerie (UMIH) who have flagged the situation to the European competition watchdog Autorités de la Concurrence.
While the Peninsula Paris might be slowly revealing its Beaux Arts façade on Avenue Kléber, a hop and a skip down the Champs Élysées, two other Parisian luxury hotels are still very much off in the land of dreams. Hotel Ritz, on terribly chic Place Vendôme, is coming up to the midway point of its two-year plus closure, or as the French put it so much more eloquently, “vers une nouvelle legende”. If possible, the building is even more obscured from prying eyes than it was last time we walked by, earlier this year.
Accor is capitalizing on new digital usage trends to boost the efficiency of its sales force with an innovative, decidedly "Web 2.0" tool, designed in partnership with Salesforce.com. Known as ANAIS (Accor New Application for Integrated Sales), the tool is used by the Group's 700 salespersons across the world and provides them with a 360° overview of the Group's strategic accounts, thus giving them a better understanding of their B-to-B customers.
Pegasus Solutions hosted hoteliers at Google's Paris location on Monday for their first joint World of Distribution seminar. The event provided a forum for representatives from Pegasus, Google, and key Parisian hotel companies to deliberate on the industry's current and developing distribution needs.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) one of the world's largest hotel companies, is delighted to announce the signing of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Lyon, France: Crowne Plaza Lyon – Cité Internationale. Due to open in quarter one 2014, the 164-room property will undergo a rapid rebranding from an existing hotel under a franchise agreement with Societe des Cinq Soeurs Pochettino (SCSP).
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. During the past few years, Accor has earned a reputation for feisty boardroom showdowns and sensational management reshuffles. On Tuesday, Europe’s largest hotel group by number of rooms named another new chief executive. At a board meeting the company confirmed that Sébastien Bazin, until now the European head of California-based Colony Capital, would become the new chairman and chief executive with immediate effect.
The Board of Directors of Accor that convened on August 27, 2013, chaired by Philippe Citerne, decided to appoint Sébastien Bazin as Chairman and CEO of Accor. To take on this new role, Sébastien Bazin has ended all his duties at Colony Capital, which he had been heading since 1997. Philippe Citerne has been appointed as Vice-Chairman of Accor's Board of Directors.
Bloomberg takes a look inside the exclusive and historic Hotel de Paris in Monaco. Famous guests included Cary Grant, Michael Jackson and Nelson Mandela. We look inside their wine cellar, one of the largest and oldest in the world. (Source: Bloomberg)
The first semester of 2013 finished on a positive note for the French hotel industry. Faced with an increasingly difficult market context, hotels throughout France improved performance levels. Despite a general downturn in occupancy, hotels managed to increase rooms revenue, thanks to a significant upsurge in average rates. This was the case throughout all the destinations analysed.
IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), one of the world’s leading global hotel companies, is proud to announce the signing of a management agreement with Société Foncière Lyonnaise (SFL) for the development of Hotel Indigo Paris – Opera, France. Located just a few steps from Opera Garnier and the InterContinental Paris Le Grand, this addition follows the recent signings of the Hotel Indigo boutique brand in Rome and Brighton.
Hotel Le Meurice, the first palace hotel in Paris, has invited Alain Ducasse to take over the management of its kitchens. He will bring to this landmark his innovative vision, ethos and distinctive take on contemporary French haute cuisine.
Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, one of the ten largest hotel groups worldwide, announces the Radisson Blu Hotel, Rouen in France. The 91-rooms property is scheduled to open in Q3 2015, and brings Carlson Rezidor's French portfolio to 23 hotels in operation and under development.
S ince 2010, Ramadan has been encroaching on the summer season and disrupting the habits of the Middle-Eastern clientele of French palaces who are traditionally fond of Paris and the French Riviera in the summer, especially in August. The figures reported by MKG clearly show the effects of this departure of customers on the upscale hotel segment in France.
French hotels launched an attack on three of the world's biggest online booking firms, saying they are unfairly twisting their arm on prices by banning them from offering reductions or taking bookings direct.
Tapping into an increasingly international attendance, the events tied to the wine and spirits industry are undeniable boost to hotel activity, as shown in Bordeaux’s performance over the last Vinexpo. The same trend was observed in Düsseldorf at the annual ProWien event. The wine and spirits industry has once again proved profitable to Bordeaux’s hospitality sector over the last edition of Vinexpo, which took place from the 16th to the 20th of June 2013.
The Luxury Collection Hotels & Resorts, part of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT), today reopens the doors to the legendary Prince de Galles, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Paris, following a meticulous two-year restoration. The restoration, which has brought the hotel back to its original Art Deco splendour, is part of a larger strategy to invest more than $200 million in some of Starwood’s most celebrated Luxury Collection hotels throughout Europe: Hotel Alfonso XIII in Seville and Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastian, which reopened in 2012, and most recently, The Gritti Palace in Venice, which was unveiled in February 2013.