Four Seasons Hotel London at Tower Bridge vs COMO Metropolitan London

Edwin Cooper's 1922 Port of London Authority headquarters at Ten Trinity Square is now a Four Seasons, and the building does most of the convincing before a single staff member says hello: five-metre ceilings, an art-deco dome over the Rotunda Bar, corridors that feel like a private institution rather than a chain property. The staff praise is oddly specific: a Rotunda bartender named Trey gets thanked by name well into 2026, and a spa therapist named Afroditi just as often.

The suites are the reason to book: soaring ceilings, real space, a category Four Seasons rarely offers this generously in London. The courtyard-facing base rooms are a plainer affair, and more than one guest has flagged a mattress harder and thinner than a Four Seasons should ship. The underground spa and pool are close to a consensus pick for best in the city; almost nobody who's used it argues otherwise.

Food is the soft spot: the Rotunda afternoon tea draws complaints about slow, unpaced service, sweets that miss while the savouries land, and paid top-ups on what should be included, which is an odd thing to nickel-and-dime at these rates. The location near Tower Bridge and the City splits people cleanly, a genuine retreat for some, a 25-30 minute haul for anyone whose trip is really about the West End, and billing mix-ups at the desk surface often enough to note. None of that should scare you off the suites or the spa, which are what people actually come back for.

Book a suite, not the base room, treat the spa as the main event and the tea as optional, and this rewards travellers who want history and quiet over a Mayfair postcode.

What you notice reading through this hotel's reviews isn't the marble or the Nobu downstairs, it's how often specific staff turn up by name. Ali the doorman comes up constantly, from a Moroccan guest who's returned for years to a family whose toddler he fussed over. Maryam gets singled out for check-in that ran faster than any hotel these travellers had used before; Vasil gets thanked for anticipating a family's needs on departure day without being asked what they were. Guests travelling with kids and those needing halal dining both describe being looked after with real thought, not box-ticking: one family mentions a birthday gift appearing in the room, another the concierge building out a full halal restaurant list and confirming the hotel's own breakfast was halal throughout.

The building itself is a preference call. The apartment-style rooms are pale, marble-and-velvet modern rather than clubby or old-world, and at least one seasoned travel planner has noted it doesn't always read as distinctly London, more like a well-run international property that happens to sit at Hyde Park Corner. Fine if you want calm and understated; less so if you came for Mayfair wood panelling. One guest also reported a disputed £350 post-stay charge for carpet stains, later reduced to a £200 refund, with little clarity given along the way about how the figure was reached. It's an outlier against a large stack of glowing write-ups, but worth getting in writing before you leave. The on-site Nobu is a genuine draw on its own terms, mentioned ahead of the hotel's own breakfast room more than once, though the spa barely comes up either way.

At current London rates, this earns its place if what you want is staff who remember your name by the second visit and a walk to Buckingham Palace across the park. Book it for Ali, for Nobu, and for a front desk that seems to actually retain its people; just get any incidental charges confirmed on paper before you check out.