Garda chiefs were tonight accused of diverting attention from a chronic accommodation shortage in a row about renting rooms at a well-known hotel complex.

They came with babies, bicycles and walkers – thousands of shoppers winding around a Manhattan block to get their hands on the spoils of the Plaza Hotel.

New York’s Plaza Hotel – for 98 years a watering hole and meeting place for kings and queens, presidents and stars – will close this spring to become luxury flats, shops and and a much smaller guest house.

Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Plc, owner of the Biltmore in Los Angeles, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world’s fourth-richest man, agreed to sell the unprofitable Plaza on New York’s Fifth Avenue for $675 million.

Hotels group Millennium & Copthorne today said it was selling its prestigious Plaza hotel in New York for about €551m.