Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane vs Mandarin Oriental, London (Hyde Park)

What you're paying for at Park Lane isn't drama, it's competence. Andrei's team remembered a diaper pail request without being asked twice; Amanda in events kept a full family baptism running smoothly outside her working hours because she wanted to, not because the job required it. Pavyllon and Bar Antoine are the genuine culinary highlight here, well ahead of the rest of the hotel, 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 real sore point: billed à la carte against an allowance rather than complimentary, and more than one guest has had to chase down overcharges on top of a service charge already added to the bill. The renovated rooms have odd quirks too, like doorless closets and a single light switch shared between bathroom and bedroom, and there's no real pool, just a spa vitality pool, which stings more the closer you look at what a night here actually costs.

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 Claridge's or the Dorchester instead; this one wins on everything that happens after check-in.

Door attendants Joaquin and Graham, receptionists Hugo, Ruby and Georgi, breakfast servers Mark and Sherif, bartender Claire: these names show up because people keep singling them out, not because we're padding a list. One couple's card got declined at check-in and a receptionist talked them through it so smoothly the awkwardness never landed. The people running this hotel are the reason to book it, ahead of the building or the rate.

Room quality swings hard depending on where you land. This is a converted, listed Victorian building, and the turret rooms and park-facing Deluxes read as genuinely special, but some guests end up in interior rooms with no real window and thin connecting doors. One guest paying around £1,000 a night got moved after a noisy night into a smaller room with no view, and was offered a drink at the bar as the fix. Another was told at 1am that a couple next door were audible through the connecting wall. Push for a Hyde Park-facing Deluxe and stay away from anything near a connecting door or a lift — the gap between a good room and a bad one here is wider than the rate should allow.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (two Michelin stars, built on old English dishes rather than anything experimental) and The Rosebery's park-view breakfast and afternoon tea both come up as the standout meals of a London trip, and guests doing the old-world comparison keep landing here over Claridge's or the Lanesborough. Those chasing round-the-clock anticipation from day one tend to end up at the Connaught instead. Book this one for the staff, the view and the food, go in ready to fight for room category, and it earns the stay.