Rosewood Amsterdam vs Rosewood Hong Kong

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.

The curved Kohn Pedersen Fox tower on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront is still the strongest argument in the whole pile of reviews: corner harbour suites and the Grand Harbour View rooms deliver a view and a room size nothing else in Hong Kong quite matches. On the 40th-floor Manor Club, staff keep track of the small things: a returning guest's tea order, ice already in the room by day two, a signature dish rotated in each evening from one of the restaurants downstairs. CHAAT comes up constantly as a favourite, and more than one traveller has called the taro cake at Butterfly Patisserie the best they've had anywhere. That's the case for booking it.

Outside the Manor Club, the story gets uneven. Several recent guests describe arriving with no one to help with bags or open the car door; one family found their child's bed hadn't been set up on a late-night arrival. Housekeeping lapses show up too often for the price: stained towels, a room left completely unserviced for a full day. Breakfast turns chaotic on busy mornings, with slow tables and dropped orders. A few guests who booked because of "world's best" rankings said the day-to-day didn't match the billing and switched their loyalty to Four Seasons or Mandarin Oriental mid-trip. One traveller on a third stay this year says the front door has genuinely gotten better compared with a year ago: more people on hand, warmer check-ins, though the polish still isn't there every time.

Book a Manor Club room or a suite and go for the food and the view, and this holds up as one of the better stays in the city. Go in on a base room expecting flawless service at every turn and you may end up writing the same complaint as everyone else. Either way, book it for the room and the harbour, not for the reputation.