Rosewood Amsterdam vs Rosewood Beijing

A ten-year restoration of Amsterdam's old Palace of Justice, and it shows in the right places: soaring ceilings, a Piet Oudolf-designed courtyard garden, more than a thousand art pieces scattered through the halls. Rooms run from around €1,000 a night to the €18,000 Herengracht House suite, and what you get for the base rate is a genuinely quiet, well-located canal-side property, a skylit pool and spa people single out as the best part of the stay, and a breakfast several guests call among the best they've had at a hotel. One guest's room service waiter brought perfectly warmed milk for a toddler every morning and talked them through a crying fit; another's front desk manager tracked down a quieter room mid-stay and followed up with a tin of fresh cookies.

The service is uneven in a way that tracks with a hotel still finding its footing post-opening. Several people had check-in moments that felt cold or dismissive, and The Court restaurant has produced real complaints: 20 to 30 minute waits just to order, lukewarm food, a host who couldn't manage a busy brunch service gracefully. The design splits opinion too — the restored architecture is not in question, but the rooms themselves get called beige, minimalist, and short on the color and personality Amsterdam itself has, especially compared to what people expected from the hype. Noise is a real, recurring complaint on lower canal-facing floors; ask for a higher one.

Worth it for the building, the garden, the spa, and a location that beats the Conservatorium for walkability without the Pulitzer's reported upkeep issues. Skip it if you want flawless, seasoned service from day one — book it for the space and the pool, and go in knowing the restaurant needs another year to catch up.

Rooms here start at 50 square meters, which in Beijing's CBD is close to unheard of, and the triple-height lobby with its ink paintings and calligraphy still reads as one of the best arrivals in the city more than a decade after opening. The rooms themselves lean library rather than hotel room: dark wood, art, shelves stacked with books and curios. One guest spent a whole afternoon just reading in the room and meant it as a compliment. The Manor Club lounge is the other reason people keep coming back, and Vincent and Joyce get named specifically for turning breakfast and evening cocktails into something worth paying the upgrade for. Country Kitchen's duck gets called some of the best in the city, not just the hotel.

The ground floor doesn't match it. A guest asking about a beverage menu at breakfast was met with a raised eyebrow and told there wasn't one, no training visible behind it. Another was double-charged at checkout and needed several staff to sort out what turned out to be a backend error. A third guest was charged over 300 RMB for two bottles of sparkling water with no warning. None of this touches the lounge, which nobody complains about, but it does mean the regular restaurants and front desk are a bit of a coin flip depending who's on. The spa is a real gap too: no proper hot tub, no steam room, no resting area, which is a strange miss for a hotel at this level and more than one guest called it out as too basic.

Book it for the room size, the lounge, and the duck: on those three, nothing else in the CBD is close. Keep an eye on the bill at checkout and don't expect the spa to be a highlight, but the Manor Club and Country Kitchen alone are worth the rate.