Left: a room in the Paris Ritz, right: the Beauvais Cathedral in need of repair.
France is considering a new tax on luxury hotels to fund vital restoration work for hundreds of aging French monuments
French Culture Minister Christine Albanel thinks a two-euro (three-dollar) tax on four- and five-star hotels could be an “interesting” way to top up the 300 million euros of state funds allocated each year to restoring France’s national heritage.
“Two little euros, it’s half the price of a soda from the minibar, in hotels where a night costs 180 to 220 euros or more,” she says, predicting the measure could generate 50 million euros each year. And it won’t hurt the French, because 70 percent of luxury-hotel guests were foreign nationals, “who are often visiting in connection with our heritage.”
Four out of ten monumental buildings in France are “in bad condition” or in “danger”, up from 32 percent in 2002, including the Beauvais Cathedral north of Paris, which boasts the world’s tallest Gothic spire.
