Side by side Four Seasons Hotel London at Tower Bridge vs Four Seasons Surf Club

This is the former Port of London Authority building turned Four Seasons, and the scale of that conversion is most of the case: five-metre ceilings, hand-carved plasterwork, suites that run to 70 square metres with gas fireplaces and freestanding tubs. Base rooms face an internal courtyard rather than the Thames, but the trade-off is quiet, genuinely quiet, in a way few central London hotels manage. The building alone is worth the detour east.

The catch is location and food, and both are price-conditional rather than dealbreakers. Tower Bridge and the Tower of London are on the doorstep, and the tube is a minute away, but Mayfair and the West End are a 30-minute Uber, which matters if that's why you're in London. Afternoon tea is the recurring sore point: guests report 45-minute waits, cold scones, savoury portions that don't match the sweet course, and a kitchen unwilling to comp a top-up on a five-star bill. Breakfast is similarly hit-or-miss for a hotel at this level, while the Rotunda Bar's cocktails get named and praised repeatedly, with Trey behind the bar coming up on his own merits.

The spa is a genuine draw, an 18,000-square-foot basement space with a proper sauna and steam room, best visited early morning before the pool fills with children (there's a no-kids-after-11am window that regulars plan around). Book this for the room, the quiet, and a hotel that resolved a broken air conditioner at midnight by moving a guest into a better suite without fuss. Skip the tea, and if Mayfair proximity matters more than square footage, that's a fair reason to look elsewhere.

The building is a restored 1930s beach club, and it shows in a way few hotels this size manage: coffered ceilings, archways, a champagne bar room guests describe as the best in the hotel. Rooms run large by Miami standards, under 80 keys total, so the pool and beach never feel packed even in season. That scarcity is most of what you're paying for, along with a front desk and pool staff that guests keep calling out by name for fixing problems before they escalate.

The trade-offs are worth knowing before you book. The property is pricey for what lands on the plate: Sunday brunch guests complain doesn't include coffee without an upcharge, and more than one person found the food merely fine for a Four Seasons, bland compared to other outposts of the same brand. The bigger issue is two separate reports of staff walking into occupied rooms unannounced, one at night, one involving a security officer standing over a sleeping guest who says the door was deadbolted. The hotel's handling of that second incident, a slow refund and a manager treating it like a late room service order, is a real mark against a brand that sells itself on trust. Book a cabana and ignore the brunch menu, and most of the complaints about food evaporate: in-room dining and dinner at Lido get consistent praise.

This is the right call for a quiet, grown-up Miami stay, away from the Faena scene and the crowding reported at 1 Hotel South Beach. Families do well here too, with a real kids club and sand toys by the beach, though anyone chasing nightlife should look toward South Beach proper instead. Worth the money for the room and the restaurant alone, less so if a flawless security record matters more to you than the building.