FRENCH HOTELS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1938, Page 11

FRENCH HOTELS

SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC. The Centre National d’Expansion du Tourisme, the official body under the directorship of M. Roland Marcel, High Commissioner for Tourist Travel in France, has just issued France’s official hotel list. Printed in four languages, English, French, German and Spanish, the handbook is the most practical work of its kind yet issued, and it has the great virtue that all prices appearing in its pages are official and guaranteed by the authorities. No hotel can appear in it without an agreement that its prices cannot be changed unless by special authority. The work folds conveniently and can be carried in an outside pocket. In its 144 pages, it gives a list of more than 4000 hotels in every part of France. Information is placed under the headings of total number of rooms, bath-rooms, price for single bedded room, price for double bedded room, terms for prolonged stay, terms for half-board, terms for each meal headed “Petit dejeuner,” the other “Breakfast.” An ingenious method is used for indicating the season or seasons when an hotel is open. A plain St Andrew’s cross means that the establishment is open all the year round. If the left-hand division is blacked out, it means that the premises are shut in spring, and if the third and fourth divisions are blacked out, that autumn and winter are closed seasons, etc.

Hotels figuring in this official list have the right to carry on their facade a large metal plate on which is the letter “H,” so that they may be easily recognised. Both at the booking desk and in every room the prices charged by the hotel must be posted up, so that there is no longer any possibility of one client being charged one price, and another client another price. Behind the door of every hotel room is a printed notice idicating the price of the room. A glance through the pages of the new official guide shows that one can find comfortable accommodation and good food anywhere in France for an average of 10s to 12s a day. At Aix-les-Bains, full pension terms range from 40 to 150 francs a day. Cannes, from 25 to 200 francs a day. Cauterets, in the Pyrenees, from 35 francs a day to 130 francs a day. Terms for full board at Dinard range from 40 francs a day to 125 francs a day, or 5s to 15s 6d.