(Bloomberg) -- London has long boasted scores of world-class hotels, but some recent openings have taken its luxury scene to the next level. The city has seen about £4 billion ($5.1 billion) in investment toward the construction and renovation of high-end hotels in recent years, much of it bearing fruit now. And these projects spare little expense: They’ve lured the world’s top chefs and become hubs for wellness innovation.

But the expense is passed on to guests, with £1,000 nightly rates suddenly feeling like a deal at many top-tier properties.No two openings exemplify that more than the Emory in Knightsbridge—a sibling to Claridge’s and the Connaught as part of the Maybourne hotel group—and the Mandarin Mayfair. Both have highly exclusive locations, celebrity chefs making their London debuts, scene-y bars, lavish spa spaces and boundary-pushing nightly rates: They start at £1,000 at the Mandarin and £1,600 at the Emory.

How do the two buzziest new hotels in London compare? We stayed in both to find out. 

Design

The Emory:   This intimate, 61-suite hotel feels like your own private retreat across from Hyde Park. The glass-box entrance on a small side street is so discreet, personal attendants wait outside to greet guests by name at check-in. They’ll whisk you up the elevators and down a plush hallway to your suite—there’s no main lobby. You’ll see the work of various A-list designers on every floor: Andre Fu did floors seven and eight, and Pierre-Yves Rochon took floors one and two. My fifth-floor balcony suite was done up in a curvilinear style  by Alexandra Champalimaud, who’s also done work for the Raffles Singapore and Badrutt’s Palace, in St. Moritz, Switzerland. At a massive 1,130 square feet, the suite dwarfed my two-bedroom London apartment, with a walk-in closet and floor-to-ceiling windows. I took a Zoom meeting from the six-seater dining table, with the breeze flowing in through the open balcony doors and Hyde Park as my background—it made me feel like a member of the Roy family on Succession. 

Mandarin Mayfair:  The red-brick exterior of the Mandarin seems like it could have always been a part of historic Hanover Square—a fashionable address since Georgian times. But inside, the new building is decidedly modern. A show-stopping green Ming marble spiral staircase leads down from the lobby to the airy restaurant and breakfast area. The rooms feature hand-painted silk wallpaper with flowering magnolias, each blue petal painted outward in accordance with the feng shui tradition. In mine, gilded masklike light fixtures adorned the walls next to the small sofa, with bountiful pops of brass, blues and golds all around. It’s a delightful break from a world where most hotel rooms come in varying shades of beige. 

Staying the Night

The Emory:   The hotel makes travel feel effortless, from the complimentary BMW airport transfer; to the timely WhatsApp messages from my Emory assistant (butler), who can secure hard-to-get dinner reservations; to the wireless device chargers on the nightstand. Another welcome amenity—a chocolate hazelnut cake with a British flag on it—came with a note congratulating me on my new British citizenship  (I had posted about it on my public Instagram account), one of many delightful personalized details. Chilled bottles of rosé, unfiltered lagers, chips, chocolates and even easy-to-forget items like iPhone chargers fill a gratis minibar that feels like a kitchen pantry. I loved the heated floors and Toto toilets in the bathrooms, and was excited to find three kits of Dyson hair-styling tools—including the Airwrap, which is like a fancy curling iron that retails for £500. But all of that pales in comparison to the super-king-size bed. It was so comfortable, it felt almost criminal to get up before 7 a.m. for a workout class in the hotel, though it was a joy, when I pressed the button by the headboard to open the blinds, to bask in the golden glow of morning over the park.

Mandarin Mayfair: A sleek escape from one of London’s busiest neighborhoods, the hotel has just 50 rooms. I loved the silk kimonos in the bathroom, and flipping through hardback copies of Bronte novels at the in-room desk (they still exist!) while winding down from sake cocktails after dinner. The minibar, also free here, thoughtfully filled with locally produced small-batch sodas, beers, ciders and kombuchas, is restocked at least twice a day. The astute staff greeted me by name at the elevator banks and the restaurant. Entry-level rooms aren’t huge, at 355 square feet, but they’re smartly designed with little sofas, circular tables and striking bathrooms with marble double vanities. My only gripe: The windows in my fourth-floor room looked right into an open-plan office building, giving me close-up views of desktop work stations. Sometimes that’s the cost of being in the middle of everything. 

Food + Drink

The Emory:  Jean-Georges Vongerichten runs two restaurants at the Connaught, so it’s no surprise to see him open his first London outpost of New York’s ABC Kitchens here. The plant-forward menu imports some of the top chef’s most beloved dishes, including black-truffle pizza and arroz con pollo with crackling skin—plus ABC’s famous green-pea guacamole, which smartly dressed couples and groups of friends are apt to share while enjoying fresh ginger margaritas. Only guests, however, can enjoy the cocktail bar on the tenth floor, which overlooks all of London’s main landmarks. It has the vibe of a private members club, with midcentury leather seats, soft carpeting and servers pouring Laurent Perrier. Don’t ask for a menu—there isn’t one. Instead, the creative bartenders will invent custom concoctions according to your personal preferences. Whatever you do, order a plate of the donuts topped with Exmoor caviar. There’s also a cigar lounge, separated from the main space and well ventilated so no smoke creeps in. 

Mandarin Mayfair: There’s another first here: the UK debut of celebrated Korean chef Akira Back, of the Michelin-starred Dosa in Seoul. At the restaurant named for the chef, his signature bite-size wagyu tacos were a treat going down, as was the kimchi fried rice and the umami-packed miso black cod. The restaurant is striking, with abstract artwork by the chef’s mother meant to represent the elements. The cocktail bar across the hall, ABar Lounge, has bartenders dressed in silk jackets with dragon prints and waitresses in full-length dresses, lending a sense of glamour that’s become a rarity in London these days.  The cocktail I ordered, a Hatsushi Sunrise (tequila, blood orange soda and kumquat liqueur) was just tart enough to cut through the warmth of an early summer night. On the weekends, the dimly lit bar is open until at least 2:30 a.m., making it an intimate option for couples enjoying post-dinner drinks in central London. A rooftop bar is set to open by the end of the year, with more details set to come. 

Spas

The Emory:   Being a hotel guest grants access to Surrenne, the £10,000-a-year wellness club housed in the building’s lower levels. Spanning four floors, it features a pool with calming music piped underwater (though the water is slightly chilly), a snow shower and an herbal-infused steam room. Surrenne is also home to London’s first Tracy Anderson studio, which of course I had to try. For my workout class, I grabbed dumbbells and ankle weights and followed LA-based trainer Kristin Elliott—svelte and smiley—through dance-heavy choreography that had my arms and legs shaking within 10 minutes. I was sore for days, but jumping on the springy floors to Taylor Swift’s Fortnight was tons of fun. The patterned pink and orange robes at the spa—available to take home for £350—are some of the most flattering and stylish I’ve seen anywhere, designed by British fashion maven Alice Temperley. In a smart tech touch, my room key doubled as a lock for my spa locker. After an Oxygeneo facial, which was mildly painful and involved a radio frequency device scraping dead skin off my forehead and cheeks, my skin looked so glowy that the friend I met for dinner asked me if I’d had something done. 

Mandarin Mayfair:  Mandarin Oriental takes its spas seriously, and the Mayfair is no exception. The 25-meter-long pool—one of the longest hotel pools in town—is decorated with starry light fixtures on black walls, making you feel like you’re floating in an intergalactic star cruiser. The reception is decorated with more of that jade-green Ming marble, and the treatment rooms, with their soft colors, are suitably serene. The whole experience is like being on a faraway planet rather than in central London; with the small room count, it’s not uncommon to get the whole space to yourself. Signature treatments such as the Digital Wellness Escape are geared toward stressed-out urbanites, like a massage that focuses on the head, neck, shoulders and hands, to ease the strain of being constantly glued to your phone. Nonguests are allowed to book treatments over 90 minutes, making it an ideal spot for a birthday or anniversary treat.

The Bottom Line

The Emory:   This is the fourth London hotel for the beloved Maybourne Group, and it’s as if the hoteliers took their 200-plus years of running the best luxury properties in the world and decided to see how aggressively they could one-up themselves. From the guest-only stunner of a rooftop bar to the members-club wellness space down below, every aspect of a stay here feels exclusive and calming—a utopian ideal of the urban oasis. The crowd at ABC Kitchens was lively and full of locals, and it will surely rank among London’s top restaurant openings this year. While the entry-level rooms are the most expensive in London, the rates include round-trip private airport transfers (easily $300 per-way at other top hotels), as well as that generous minibar and a lavish in-room English breakfast. Which is to say: There’s a real commitment here to offering value for all that money. With layouts starting at 592 square feet, the suites are large enough for families that might book two rooms elsewhere—or anyone looking to live like a billionaire for a weekend.  

Mandarin Mayfair:  A representative for the hotel described it as the “cooler, younger” version of the Mandarin Oriental’s grande dame in Knightsbridge, and that feels right on the mark. Akira Back’s inventive restaurant, with its swanky cocktail lounge, is now one of the most impressive places to go on a date in Mayfair. The hotel also makes an ideal base for first-time visitors to London, as it’s within walking distance of all the boutiques of Bond Street, the British Museum and many of the main touristy sites in the West End. It’s a welcome addition to the beloved neighborhood’s already world-class hospitality scene, and I’d happily go back for another dreamy swim under the glow of the spa pool’s twinkly lights. 

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