Are French hotels currently prohibited from using air conditioning?

We just arrived at a 4-star hotel in France that says they are not allowed to have air-conditioning because of new Regulations. We are aware of regulations that affect restaurants, but this is the first time we have heard that they can’t or won’t turn on the AC.

Is this new? Did it go into effect when they reinstated the Face Mask Law? We think they’re fibbing, but thought prudent to research.

Unfortunately for us, we did not read the online information properly. It doesn’t say anything about not being able to use AC. They sprung that on us after we checked in.

And unfortunately for them, we’ve stayed in hotels all across France the last two weeks where, guess what, they had AC.