I was standing in the blowing snow and freezing cold, along with a crowd of equally frozen tourists, waiting to get into Notre Dame Cathedral. Secretly I was hoping that Quasimodo was still around and, mistaking us for enraged townspeople coming for his Esmeralda, would choose that moment to pour boiling oil on the crowd below and warm us up a little. No such luck. Eventually we were able to get inside and I was impressed by the correlation between the low temperatures outside and the high number of religious people inside. A study should be made.

Ultimately Paris is Paris, one of the world’s greatest cities, and weather does not really stop Parisians from being Parisians. Barely slows them down. The minute the snow stops the streets are filled with beautiful, fashionably-dressed people wearing fashionable hats (hats are in) and fashionable scarves fashionably wrapped around their beautiful faces. Museum-quality window displays beckoned, the restaurants were filled, and the Christmas market on des Champ-Elysees was packed with holiday shoppers and photo opportunities. Want to know another great thing about Paris in winter? Very few tourists.

I had the good fortune of being a “hosted buyer” of Starwood Hotels at the EIBTM trade show in Barcelona (a great show if you plan any kind of international meetings or incentives) and they graciously invited me on a post-EIBTM familiarization trip to Paris to look at their hotels there. I've written about many hotels there, including the Westin, in my April in Paris blog (which I am sure you remember), so I will try not to repeat myself. This time I got to spend four nights at the Westin and want to reiterate that for the combination of price, location and service, it is a great deal. Situated across from the Tuileries Gardens just two blocks from the Place de la Concorde and the Place Vendome, I guess you could say it is “close to shopping.” That’s a joke. It is surrounded by some of the most amazing shopping in the world. Make sure you bring your unlimited credit card and your first-born. Forget the expense; not only will you look fabulous, but also Parisian.

We also looked at the Prince de Galles, one of Starwood’s Luxury Collection hotels located off des C d’E and sharing a wall with The Four Seasons. It is a smaller property, suitable for high-end board meetings, and has a very old-world charm and personal service. The 4S next door is always voted the top hotel in the world and although I am never sure who is voting and on what criteria, it definitely is up there. The Prince is not that far up, but it’s up there, and about 200 Euros less per night if that matters.

I took another walk through a non-Starwood property, the independently owned Bristol. The hotel is owned and beautifully maintained by an extremely wealthy German family, possibly so they have somewhere to stay up to their standards when in Paris. The sales manager who gave me the tour was very discreet and would not tell me who the celebrities were in-house, but my intuition tells me it was Brad and Angelina, or maybe just Brad, or just Angelina. It’s that kind of place.

My reason for taking another look at the property is two-fold. First, they are moving their Michelin three-star restaurant to another part of the hotel overlooking the garden, and converting what was the restaurant, an amazing room in itself, into function space suitable for a board meeting or private dinner. It was cool. The second reason is that the new general manager of the hotel had been persuaded (stolen?) to come over from that same Four Seasons, consistently voted the best in the world under his watch. The Paris hotel world is abuzz. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

So… a few short notes from Paris in December 2010. Can’t get enough of that city. Convince whomever you need to convince that they should take their next incentive or meeting there, and then call me first.

Oh, by the way, there are a lot of really, really beautiful women in Paris. In case you were wondering.

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