Is this the fifth Bristol Hotel in Poland?

The new Bristol Hotel in Rzeszow (see previous post) is, as far as I know, the fifth hotel in Poland to take the name. The others are in Bytom, Kielce, Tarnow, Warsaw.


The Warsaw Bristol is best known, and features in Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour, one of the stories in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. Revitalised following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Bristol was re-opened in 1993 by Margaret Thatcher, and the story is based on this event. She and her husband Denis stayed in the palatial Paderewski suite. Ignacy Paderewski, the piano-playing prime minister, was co-founder of the hotel, which opened in 1901. After independence in 1918, the first government meetings were held here. 

Bristol will be Polish city's first 5-star hotel

Another new Bristol Hotel – this time it's being built in Rzeszow, a county town in the south of Poland. Near the market square (pictured), it will be the first 5-star hotel in Rzeszow, with 140 rooms, conference facilities and restaurants. Scheduled to open by the end of 2012, it is already looking for a Director General and a Head of Sales and Marketing. The company behind the project is Aksjon Sp, whose other hotels include the Aurora on the Baltic coast at Miedzyzdrojach - it clearly likes international hotel names.

Le Bristol voted one of eight Palace hotels

Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris is often referred to as one of the city's top "palace' hotels, a denomination created in 2009. Now the title is official. Four hotels in Paris and four others in the rest of France have been designated "Palace" hotels. The award was decided by a jury headed by the writer and member of the French Acdemy, Dominique Fernandez, and included members of the media, architecture, and hotel groups.

The Paris Hotels are:
• Le Hôtel Bristol, owned by Oetker Collection
• Le Meurice, part of the Dorchester Collection
• Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, owned by the Hyatt family
• Plaza Athenée, also part of the Dorchester Collection (their two other top Paris hotels, the Ritz and George V, failed to make the Palace grade) 

Outside Paris:
• Biarritz: L'Hôtel du Palais Biaritz (pictured above), the only one actually built as a royal palace, for the Empress Eugenie
• Courchevel: Cheval Blanc, owned by LVMH, and Les Aireilles, owned by Stephan Courbit, whose superyacht sank in the Aegean last month.

• Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat: Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat, bought by Len Blavatnik, a Russian billionaire with American citizenship living in London, in 2008. Does he still own it?

Each hotel will receive a special plaque. The first one was fixed onto the front of the Paris Bristol in the presence of Tourism minister Frederic Lefebvre.