Hotel for the Rich

By Michael Demarest

Suites rent for some $5,000 a night, with croissants extra

Parisians, who think of their city as a paradigm of enlightened hedonism, do not quite know what to make of a gaudy new encampment in their midst. It is called the Hotel Nova-Park Elysees. Its Second Empire fac,ade is festooned with flamingo-pink awnings. Inside, which is mostly mauve, the action is known to be exotic and costly. It is said to be the most expensive hotel in the world. Located between the Champs-Elysees and the Plaza Atheeneee, the seven-story, 73-room Nova-Park has mostly Swiss owners, and is conspicuously patronized by Arabs. Le Monde calls it "a triumph of petro-baroque." Other observers have labeled the decor "Swiss swish" and "sheik chic " What is not in dispute is the cost of staying there.

The hotel's twelve-room Royal Suite, where Jimmy Carter and a dozen Secret Service men spent two days last spring as guests of French industrialists, runs around $5,000 a night at the present favorable rate of exchange. It has a private rooftop garden, bulletproof windows, private telex machines, Reuters and Agence France-Presse news bulletins, an electronic device that guarantees the phones are not bugged, dining and conference chambers, and a bar at the entrance to each living room. The Thousand and One Nights Suite, a triplex with a chic little swimming pool, costs $1,455 a night, breakfast not included. But even though guests may have to pay for their croissants, they do get use of a Rolls-Royce. Bathrooms have Jacuzzi tubs but no doors; one bathroom even sits in the middle of a bedroom.

On a pillow-by-pillow, faucet-by-faucet basis, the suites are not as hugely expensive as they seem. A few small rooms rent for $145, just the thing for bodyguards. The Royal Suite has two living rooms, five bedrooms with at least ten closets, and seven bathrooms. Even so, some visitors find its 4,844 sq. ft. oppressively small. One sheik had to rent two other suites to accommodate his baggage.

The Nova-Park Elysees, which sits on the site of the century-old Paris-Match building and retains its fac,ades, cost about $45 million to furbish and furnish. It is largely the inspiration of Rene E. Hatt, 55, a beefy Swiss developer known to the hotel's 280 employees as Le Big Boss. Hatt, whose Nova-Park chain owns Switzerland's biggest hotel, in Zurich, also has hotels in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia and Cairo. This fall the chain will open its first U.S. hotel, in New York City; it will occupy the Gotham, a well-loved 77-year-old structure that is being totally rebuilt. Its presidential suite will rent for $1,750 a night, plus tax. Le Big Boss, who studied philosophy and psychology before switching to economics at the University of Zurich, says, "A hotel is the guest room of the city."

To that end, the Elysees offers six restaurants and ten bars, a disco, a nightclub, a businessman's service center with stock exchange quotes and multilingual secretaries, a fitness club, a swimming pool with "beach club," even a corner for bridge players. There are no Gideon Bibles in the rooms. Instead, to "Parisianize" foreigners, Hatt plans to provide French classics. On the walls hang framed pensees.

Thus far, there is only one mouche in the onguent: the hotel's premier restaurant, supervised by the renowned chef Jacky Freon and set partly in a breathtaking patio garden, has yet to stir much enthusiasm among Parisians. Though it has a 16 (out of 20) rating from Gault et Millau, the authoritative Paris columnists (awarded before the hotel opened), other critics have found the restaurant memorable mostly for the Mozart played by a string trio at mealtimes. In any event, despite Halt's philosophy ("A guest should never have to stir outside his hotel"), Paris is not the kind of city where visitors feel constrained to eat where they sleep. Besides, there is the Rolls and, to make outside restaurant reservations, the beautiful Margaret, who is indisputably the most attractive head receptionist in Paris. Hatt & Co. must be doing something right. The Nova-Park Elysees is sold out through August. -- By Michael Demarest

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