12.11.2004 – 16:37

Institutional Investor Magazine

Vive Le Roi! George V In Paris Takes Top Honors In Institutional Investor Magazine's Survey of the World's Best Hotels

New York, November 12 (ots/PRNewswire)

When Saudi prince
Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz bought the George V in Paris, in
1996, he declared that it was "simply the best hotel in the world."
Eight years later, the refurbished hotel, managed by Four Seasons
Hotels under a 99-year contract, is the top choice of a high-powered
panel of senior corporate and financial executives surveyed by
Institutional Investor magazine for its 24th annual ranking of the
World's Best Hotels. The Four Seasons George V, which features a
restaurant with three Michelin Guide stars and charges US$850 per
night for a room, rises from 11th in last year's ranking.

Taking second place in this year's ranking is Bangkok's Sukhothai,
which offers a restaurant set in a water garden and "seems to float
on a lotus pool," as one recent guest put it. At the third-ranked
Bel-Air of Los Angeles, the hotel's Presidential Suite is tucked away
behind a lush, 12-acre garden.

Here are the top ten hotels in the world, as ranked by respondents
to Institutional Investor's World's Best Hotels Survey.

Rank                 Hotel                City
     1             Four Seasons George V       Paris
     2             Sukhothai                   Bangkok
     3             Bel-Air                     Los Angeles
     4             Four Seasons Singapore      Singapore
     5             Four Seasons Marunouchi     Tokyo
     6             Peninsula                   Hong Kong
     7             Four Seasons Istanbul       Istanbul
     8             Mandarin Oriental           San Francisco
     9             Ciragan Palace Kempinski    Istanbul
     10            Park Hyatt-Vendome          Paris

This year's panel of senior corporate and financial executives
ranked 80 hotels in 37 cities. The voters are seasoned travelers who
spent an average of 52 nights in hotels over the past year.
Respondents rated hotels they had visited recently on a scale of 1 to
100.

For the complete article and more details on the ranking, please
visit http://www.InstitutionalInvestor.com/pr.

Web site: http://www.InstitutionalInvestor.com/pr

Contact:

Kim Lemmonds, Institutional Investor magazine, +1-212-224-3650,
klemmonds@institutionalinvestor.com