Belmond The Cadogan vs Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane

Sixty-seven keys, and it behaves like it: staff learn your name by the first night, and the small gestures that follow (Arsenal scarves for a match mentioned only in passing, an anniversary cake, a teddy bear dressed on a child's bed) turn up in review after review, months and different guests apart. Several guests independently credit general manager Russell Pratt by name for setting the tone. The Chelsea location, opposite the private garden and a few minutes from Sloane Street and the Kings Road, is the other thing nobody disputes.

The catch is the base room. Deluxe rooms run small for the money, more than one guest has said the photos oversell the square footage, and one traveller was quietly rebooked from a junior suite into a standard room by a third-party booking error, only finding out the day before arrival. Book above the Deluxe category if you can. Wellness is thin too: there's no real spa program, and gym access has been inconsistent enough that at least one recent guest simply found it shut for their whole stay. This is a townhouse, not a resort, and it doesn't pretend otherwise once you're standing in an empty gym.

Suite rooms are where the money is well spent: the marble-and-mosaic bathrooms get singled out constantly, and Willetts' risotto and breakfast draw specific, repeated praise rather than generic five-star box-ticking. One guest fought a billing dispute over a broken radiator: the only sour note anyone's struck in months. Book a junior suite for the townhouse at its best: the marble bathrooms, Willetts downstairs, and staff who'll know your name by dinner.

What you're paying for at Park Lane isn't drama, it's competence, repeated so consistently that guests start naming names: Amanda in events, Marco and Ash at breakfast, Tamas at the door, Andrei's team remembering a baby's diaper pail order without being asked twice. Pavyllon and Bar Antoine are the genuine culinary highlight, and the quiet, blackout-curtained rooms on a residential Mayfair side street between Hyde Park and Green Park make this one of the better jet-lag cures in the city, kids in tow or not.

The catch is that the money doesn't stretch as far as it should once you're past the room rate. Breakfast has become a sore point: billed à la carte against an allowance, not complimentary, and more than one guest has had to chase overcharges, plus a service charge on top. There's also no real pool, just a spa vitality pool, which stings more the closer you look at the nightly rate.

Worth booking if what you actually want is effortless, well-drilled comfort and a location that's hard to beat for walking the parks and Mayfair shopping. If it's history in the walls you're after, look at the grand dames; this one wins on everything that happens after check-in.