Belmond The Cadogan vs Hotel Cipriani, A Belmond Hotel, Venice

Sixty-seven keys, and it behaves like a house with sixty-seven keys: staff learn your name by the first night, and the small gestures pile up fast. One couple mentioned an Arsenal game in passing at check-in and found official scarves waiting in their room two nights later. Another family got a teddy bear dressed on their daughter's bed and an anniversary cake they hadn't asked for. General manager Russell Pratt gets thanked by name often enough that he's clearly setting the tone rather than getting lucky once. The Chelsea location, opposite the private garden and a few minutes from Sloane Street and the Kings Road, is the other thing nobody argues with.

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 the gym has simply been shut during at least one recent stay with no fix offered. 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 called out constantly, and Willetts' risotto and breakfast come up by name rather than as generic five-star box-ticking. One guest fought a billing dispute after a broken radiator went unfixed on night two, the sourest note in months of otherwise glowing accounts. Book a junior suite for the townhouse at its best: the marble bathrooms, Willetts downstairs, and staff who'll know your name by dinner.

The case for the Cipriani starts with the pool. It's the largest in Venice, set inside gardens people describe as immaculate, and it turns a city built entirely of stone and canals into somewhere you can actually spend a lazy afternoon. Add the private boat that gets you into San Marco in about ten minutes and back out again before the crowds peak, and you have a genuine strategy for doing Venice without Venice wearing you down. The breakfast terrace earns its reputation too, right down to the trained hawk that keeps pigeons off the tables while you eat.

The trade-offs are real and worth pricing in before you book. Restaurant costs run well ahead of what the food and service deliver, by more than one account, and the poolside restaurant in particular has drawn complaints about slow, inattentive waitstaff and a strict dress code enforced without much grace. One long-time family flagged a genuinely ugly encounter with the pool bar manager and event security that soured a tradition spanning three generations. Rooms have improved a great deal with the recent renovation, but at least one guest found the air conditioning couldn't keep up on a hot night, which is not a small thing at these prices. The new Dior spa, opened this year, is the freshest addition and by early accounts a legitimate reason to book, though it's too new for a real track record.

None of this cancels the pull of the place. This is for people who want a resort that happens to be in Venice rather than a city hotel with a view of it, and who'd rather deal with occasional restaurant friction than give up the pool, the gardens, and that boat ride. Couples and honeymooners get the most out of it; families with young kids may find Airelles or a quieter alternative fits better. Book it for the grounds, the pool, and that breakfast terrace.