Crash-site hotelon the market
One of the hotels damaged in the Concorde air crash in Paris last July is for sale, partly because not enough guests want to stay so near to the scene.
Les Relais Bleus hotel was next to the Hotelissimo, destroyed when the airliner crashed (Caterer, 3 August 2000, page 7).
The Hotelissimo is still sealed off by police and business has been hit at Les Relais Bleus since the disaster.
This is believed to be partly because the crash site can still be seen from Les Relais Bleus while the investigation continues.
The 72-bedroom two-star hotel is for sale through Christie and Co's Paris office, with an asking price of Ffr15.6m (£1.52m).
Catherine Rawazundi, handling the sale, said: "The owner is tired and fed up. He was going to sell but the crash has made him decide to sell earlier than he otherwise would have done."
Rawazundi added that the hotel, close to Charles de Gaulle airport, would be a good long-term investment, but because guests were being put off in the short term, buyers had been discouraged.
Les Relais Bleus was part of a franchise owned by a French group that went out of business.
The name cannot be sold on, so whoever buys the hotel will operate it under another name.
by David Harris
