Rosewood Amsterdam vs The Chancery Rosewood London

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 Chancery took the old US Embassy on Grosvenor Square, a brutalist Portland stone block Mayfair had learned to look past, and turned it into the most architecturally confident hotel London has opened in years. Joseph Dirand's suites run genuinely residential, walnut and brass and rare green marble baths, with even the entry Junior Suites hitting 570+ sq ft. The 25m pool and Asaya spa below ground are a real point of difference in a city where most luxury hotels can't spare the basement for it, and the Ginza-style omakase plus the Eagle Bar (that salvaged B-52 eagle now sitting over two new penthouse floors) are destination-worthy on their own, not add-ons.

The service is uneven, and it's been uneven since the September 2025 opening, not just in the first nervous weeks. One guest got a butler who gave an unforgettable private tour and a manager who remembered a child's name; another, a week later, got an AC unit switching itself on at 3am, an afternoon tea where the tea itself never arrived, or a concierge quoting £1,200 for a tour bookable elsewhere for £250. Several stays land on the same description without prompting each other: reactive rather than anticipatory, fixed after the fact rather than caught before it happens. Nearly a year in, that's not opening jitters, it's still the pattern. Worth pricing in, not worth avoiding the hotel over.

Book it for the design, the suites, and the spa: nothing else in Mayfair offers this much space and wellness for the money. Go in knowing service is a dice roll, not a guarantee — if flawless, intuitive staff matters more to you than anything else, Claridge's or the Connaught still deliver that more reliably. For the building and the suite alone, this earns the trip.