The Royal Monceau Hotel on avenue Hoche next to the Arc de Triomphe was closed by court order on Thursday for at least 3 months. All of the customers were put in other four-star hotels. The security report said that emergency exits ended in dead ends or had wooden stairways, which made them absolute death traps. As for the kitchen, well, we won't go into that.

Apparently, two companies were fighting over this and 3 other hotels, and one of the companies managed to grab control of the hotels ("by force&quot on December 21st. Each is accusing the other of ruining the sale of the Royal Monceau to interests in Dubai for 250 million euros. Security whistles were blown probably for revenge, but somebody probably should have blown the whistles long ago. At least there were no fires in the meantime.

Have all the saftey inspectors who took bribes to pass the hotel in the past been arrested?

I wish.

Thanks for the heads up, K.

Another reason for sticking with 2* hotels.

Do 2* (and other *) hotels have smoke detectors?

On TripAdvisor, I've read various reviews in different cities for hotels of all levels (from 0 to 4*) that have serious issues with locking fire exits, and so forth. I doubt it's a 2* vs. 4* issue. Obviously the deadly fire that occurred a couple years ago in Paris was in a 1* hotel.