It is the grandest hotel in France, with suites costing up to €8,220 (£7,150) a night and a register signed by the likes of King George V, Sir Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin.
But Hôtel de Crillon in Paris is in limbo — lacking a chef for its Michelin-starred restaurant and awaiting a renovation — amid a legal wrangle over its sale by its US owner Starwood Capital, the investment firm.
In the latest episode, JJW Hotels & Resorts, a Saudi-backed company that had been negotiating to buy the Crillon, said it was preparing to sue Starwood for €50 million.
The move comes after a French court refused to deliver a summary judgment on Starwood’s claim that it was owed €100 million by JJW — a delay that may keep the overhaul of the Crillon on hold for weeks or months.
The stand-off follows an agreement by the investment group to enter exclusive talks with Mohamed bin Issa al-Jaber, JJW’s chairman, over the sale of nine celebrated French hotels for a reported €1.5 billion last year.
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Along with the Crillon, the deal concerned the Lutetia, Hotel du Louvre and two Concorde hotels in Paris, Hôtel de la Paix in Geneva, the Martinez in Cannes, the Massalia in Marseilles and the Palais de la M?diterran?e in Nice. But after claiming that JJW had paid only a third of the agreed €150 million deposit, Starwood instructed property advisers Jones Lang LaSalle, CB Richard Ellis and Eastdil Secured to look for other potential buyers.
A source close to the investment firm said that it had doubts about JJW’s capacity to finance the purchase and considered the exclusivity clause to be null and void.
Starwood, which acquired the hotels from Taittinger, the champagne group, as part of a $1.5 billion (£915 million) deal in 2005, is now understood to want to sell them one by one with the Crillon being valued at about €300 million. But JJW says the exclusivity clause remains valid until March.
Maurice Lantourne, JJW’s lawyer, said he was planning to ask a French court to block the sale of the hotels to anyone else and demand the return of the €50 million. “They have violated our agreement,” he told Le Figaro.
The upshot is a rare period of uncertainty in the illustrious history of the Crillon, which began as a government building on La Place de la Concorde on the orders of Louis XV.
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Starwood was planning to renovate the 147- room establishment and there was talk of enlarging the suites, even though they already consist of up to three bedrooms and two living rooms each. A spa was also in the offing.
But that plan is now on hold, forcing les habitu?s, such as Madonna and Jennifer Lopez, to make do with saunas, Jacuzzis and Turkish baths.
Les Ambassadeurs, the hotel’s two-starred restaurant, is also in danger of drifting after Jean-François Piège, its celebrated chef, walked out last month to take over a Parisian brasserie.
The Crillon has since instructed culinary headhunters to find a successor capable of equalling his signature dishes, such as black truffle spaghetti.
Jean-François Rouquette, chef at the Hyatt Vendome hotel in Paris, was rumoured to be the favoured candidate. But he let it be known he had turned down the move.