The Crillion, one of the ultra-chic Paris hotels is now vying for billionaire clients.

Hotel class

The Crillon is the hotel where Marie-Antoinette once had music lessons and whose guests have ranged from Sir Winston Churchill to Madonna, and is expected to swiftly obtain "palace" status, bringing the number of such top-class hotels that go beyond five stars to 14 in the French capital in the coming months.

The number has doubled in a decade, meaning that Paris now offers almost 2,000 luxury suites at €1,000 a night on average.

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The Crillion

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Ultra-chic

"There is no city in the world that can, like Paris, gather so many palaces with such a high average room rate," claimed Christophe Laure, president of the luxury hotels union UMIH Prestige.

Le Crillon, whose novelties include a swimming pool with 17,600 fish-scale mosaic tesserae lining the basin, is among the most exclusive, with rooms starting at €1,200 to a staggering €32,000 per night for one of two "Grands Appartements" decorated by Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel's iconic creative director.

The timing is serendipitous, as after a desperate drop in the luxury market in the wake of the 2015 terror attacks - where occupancy fell to as low as 20 per cent - business is finally picking up, if not quite to pre-2015 levels. June was a bumper month and July is also looking rosy too. Vive la France!

@mindhunter

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