HOTELS & SPAS

For a culture so steeped in luxe, it's something of an anomaly that France's system of hotel classification stopped until recently at four stars. Such was the French commitment to notions of egalité that even the most palatial, most eye-wateringly expensive Paris hotels — the Dorchester Collection's Hôtel Plaza Athénée, for instance, which charges nearly £17,000 for a night in its Royal Suite, excluding breakfast and city tax — had to make do with the same rating as a Holiday Inn.

Not any more. In 2009 a new system, introduced by the Secretary of State for Tourism, began to be rolled out. Along with it came a five-star rating, though to qualify a hotel has to satisfy a further 30 requirements (formerly there were 94; now there are 124). The old blue enamel plaques are going, too: henceforth five-star hotels can advertise their classification with gold ones. Not that this has necessarily made life easier for Paris's six most celebrated grandes dames — the Ritz, the George V, the Hôtel de Crillon, Le Bristol, the Plaza Athénée and Le Meurice — which, in an effort to compensate for the perceived indignity of their egalitarian classification (they're still officially categorised alongside major international chains such as Sofitel and Hyatt), came up with the term 'palace'.

Franka Holtmann, directeur-général of Le Meurice, defines a 'palace' as a hotel in a building that has history and a certain grandeur, a very high proportion of suites, a staff-guest ratio of about three to one and a gastronomic restaurant. For the moment, palace is not an officially recognised designation (except, perhaps, in the eyes of France's Competition Authority, which brought charges against the six in 2005 on the grounds that they were operating as a cartel, exchanging confidential information in order to keep their rack rates artificially high — and fined them all accordingly.) The term is, however, expected to become an official classification this spring, when it will be up to a jury of designers, celebrities and people from business to decide which of the 100 or so five-star hotels qualify for special palatial status.

This has not stopped some hotels already calling themselves palaces. Park Hyatt, for example, dubbed its property near the Place Vendôme 'the first contemporary palace in Paris' when it opened in 2002. Fouquet's Barrière, on the Avenue George V, styles itself 'a veritable Parisian palace' and makes much of the fact that it is French-owned, which none of the original six 'palaces' is.

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