o Five thieves armed with axes raided the jewellery store at the Ritz Hotel, Paris and took items worth £4 million on January 10th. Police very quickly arrived and caught three of the thieves as the other two, accomplices waiting outside to receive the loot, made off in a car and on a motorbike, the motorcyclist dropping the bag of the stolen goods as he pulled away. Police said no-one was hurt.

o A Britannia hotel, the Grand Burstin in Folkestone, Kent has been ordered to pay £12,781 compensation to a widow who had jewellery stolen from her locked bedroom.

Primrose Grainger, 77, woke up to see two thieves in her room taking her valuable rings from her bedside table in July 2013. Britannia Hotels argued in court that she could have avoided the loss by putting her valuables in one of its safe deposit boxes. However the judge at Central London county court heard that there had been a spate of robberies at the hotel and that the thieves had probably found a key to her room in the building. He found that Britannia Hotels could have prevented the theft by upgrading its keycard security.

A claim from Ms Grainger for psychiatric damage was rejected on the grounds that this was “not foreseeable” by the hotel.

o Marriott International Hotels and the Thompson Group have been criticised by environmentalists for continuing to supply and promote “walking with lions” experiences for Marriott guests at the four-star Ranch Protea Hotel, Limpopo.

The human-wildlife interactions are designed to instill a lack of fear of humans into the lions, which are later sold to those organising sick “canned hunts”. Here the lions are transferred to small enclosures where brave hunters pay to shoot the docile animals at close range. The lion’s body parts and bones are then sold to the Chinese medicine industry.