Drafted by our own engine from the reports behind the scores, then edited by Nicolas.
Is Rosewood London still the same hotel?
Ask around and you'll get two different answers depending on who was asked and when. Rosewood London has always split opinion on the building itself: small rooms, a Holborn address that's either a relief from the Mayfair crush or a reason to book elsewhere. That split hasn't moved. What's worth checking is whether the thing that carries the hotel — the staff, Scarfes Bar, the tea programme — is still carrying it a year on. We haven't stayed. What follows is the pattern across guest reports from the last twelve months set against the previous year.
What the recent reports say
From roughly April 2026 back through the summer of 2025, the praise for service is heavy and specific. Guests name individual staff members (a restaurant manager, a reception agent, a concierge) as the reason a stay worked. Early check-in before 11am against a 3pm standard, children's welcome amenities thought through rather than bolted on, a concierge team credited with sorting out difficult reservations. The Monet-themed Mirror Room afternoon tea is described as a trip in itself: guests who never spend the night still book it, and the pistachio, Water Lily Pond-inspired piece is named more than once. One recent note flags a discretionary service charge added on top of an Amex FHR booking that caught the guest off guard — worth knowing before you book that channel specifically. Another, from mid-2026, mentions lens wipes being handed out — a small, current detail that at least suggests the property is still paying attention to seasonal specifics.
February 2025: the comparison-shopping
Go back to the prior year and the texture is different in one important way: there's more open comparison-shopping against other London five-stars, and some of it isn't kind. A cluster of reports from February 2025 has guests ranking Rosewood behind the Ritz, Claridge's and the Langham, with one describing the stay as soulless next to the other five-stars in town, while still carving out Scarfes Bar as an exception worth the trip on its own. That's a harder split than anything in the recent batch — praise plus a rival named and preferred, rather than praise on its own. The Holborn Dining Room chef departure (Callum Franklin) is mentioned as a loss in both periods, so that's a steady negative, not a new one. What looks different now is that the service complaints and the preference for other hotels that were common eighteen months ago are largely absent from the recent run — the room and location gripes are still there, but they read as a known trade-off rather than a growing complaint.
Scarfes Bar and the Mirror Room tea
Nothing here points to a renovation, a new GM, or any structural reset — this looks like a hotel holding its own line rather than turning a corner. The consistent thread across both periods is that the rooms were never the draw and isn't pretending to be now; what matters is that the staff, the bar, the tea are the things people pay the premium for, and they haven't slipped the way they often do a few years after an opening. What we haven't tested: whether a specific room category (the entry rooms most often flagged as cramped) has had any renovation work done, and whether the discretionary service charge issue is FHR-booking-specific or broader. If your trip is built around the tea, the bar, and staff who remember your name, the last year of reports says book it. If you need the room itself to do the work, that's the same conditional it's always been.
