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France -

Article published the Wednesday 19 October 2011 - Latest update : Sunday 23 October 2011

Paris's Ritz hotel to fire 450+ during renovation

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi visits the Ritz for a meeting with French bosses

Reuters

By RFI

Paris’s world-famous Ritz hotel is set to fire over 450 employees and close for more than two years for renovation.

The luxury hotel, which is owned by Egyptian millionaire Mohammed al Fayad, says that an “unprecedented renovation project” will start in the summer of 2012 and last 27

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months. It says that its 160 rooms and suites will keep their traditional style but offer “the latest technological innovations”.

But the five-star hotel cannot find the resources to pay more than 30 of its 500 staff while the work is underway, although it said it would discuss what compensation laid-off workers will receive.

Unions, who are furious that members of the hotel’s sports club were told of the renovation in May long before they were, say that only management are among those who will be kept on. They want workers to receive at least part of their pay so that they can return when the renovation is over.

The Ritz’s last major facelift was in 1979 and it recently failed to win the coveted “palace” status awarded to France’s top hotels.

Pages from the Ritz’s history:

Founded in 1898 by César Ritz and chef Auguste Escoffier;
Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were habitués and Ernest Hemingway claimed to have “liberated” it at the end of World War II;
Coco Chanel lived there for 30 years, installing her own furniture in her apartment;
Audrey Hepburn’s Love in the Afternoon was filmed there;
Al Fayad’s son, Dodi, and Diana Spencer spent their last evening at the hotel before being killed in a car accident in a Paris underpass in August 1997.