When it comes to high-end hotels on the Right Bank in Paris, how does one choose? One of the oldest is the Ritz, where the Spoiled Guest has stayed on multiple occasions. One of the newest is the Cheval Blanc, a creation of the LVMH luxury conglomerate headed by French business mogul Bernard Arnault, and sister to similarly luxurious hotel properties in St. Barth, St. Tropez, the Maldives, and Courchevel.

It goes without saying that The Cheval Blanc Paris and the Ritz are both delightful, each in its own different way, and that anyone who has the choice between them not only can’t go wrong but is one lucky traveler (they are comparably, astronomically priced). But how to compare the two? The obvious answer would be to say that the Cheval Blanc is hyper-contemporary and the Ritz very traditional — hipster moderne vs old-school elegance (or OG, as the kids say these days). But that’s a little too easy, and one must burrow into the details of the experience of each place (Location; Personnel; Design; Room; Spa; Dining and Bar) to get a more accurate sense of comparison.

Location:

The Cheval Blanc’s location is both its greatest asset and its greatest liability. Sitting just across the busy Quai du Louvre from the Pont Neuf, its facade faces the Seine, which means stunning views from its rooms and restaurants, but also frontal exposure to one of the busiest avenues and most popular bridges in Paris, bringing noise (more on that later), congestion, and a high rate of random walk-ins by curious non-guest tourists and determined Instagrammers — or “Instarazzi,” as the SG has taken to calling them (more on that too). The exposure issue isn’t helped by the fact that the lobby, reception, and concierge functions are all located in one large, high-ceilinged, attractive, but very open space, meaning that you can be seated at the reception desk while a would-be Tik-Tok influencer who just popped in off the street is taking photos of the place with her phone mere feet away. The staff does try to limit non-guest traffic by stationing rather effete bouncers inside the front entrance, but as these tend to be young, pretty girls (in keeping with the general staffing emphasis on youth and attractiveness), they’re a poor barrier against the curious throngs.

View of the Pont Neuf from the Cheval Blanc

The Ritz, on the other hand, with its incomparable location on the vast Place Vendôme, is far more sheltered, and even when tour groups wander by, they’re buffered by the enormity of the plaza and its remove from major avenues, not to mention the much more serious-looking, black-suited security men (and they are men) stationed immediately inside the hotel’s doors. And the reception desk, while lacking chairs for the guests, is located in its own charming, quiet cul-de-sac well off the main entrance.

The Ritz is farther west and north, so if you’re wanting a short walk to the Louvre, Ile de la Cite’, or the Latin Quarter, CB is more convenient. But the Ritz is steps from the high-fashion shops along the Rue Saint-Honore,’ and only a slightly longer walk to the charms of the Left Bank. On balance, the Ritz wins in the location category.

Personnel:

On our recent visit (September 2023), the Cheval Blanc reception and door staff was remarkably welcoming; informal and warm but unfailingly professional — a difficult combination that could only result from rigorous training, yes, but also careful hiring; you can’t teach the kind of charm that the front-of-the-house staff radiated. Every time we emerged from the elevator bank, someone stood up from the reception desk to greet us, so that even after a too-short four-night stay, they felt like friends. The door staff was quick to arrange courtesy cars for us and was efficient in managing the constant flow of vehicles through the small, congested hotel drop point in front.

Front-of-house at the Ritz is a bit cooler, both in the sense that it’s less frenetic and a bit haughtier, but unfailingly professional.

CB wins the front-of-house personnel category. Restaurant staff is a different story, per below.

Design:

CB is almost brand-new and strikingly modern. The Ritz is very old and wildly ornate. You pay your money and you pick your style. Both are beautifully executed and impeccably maintained. CB has wide, beautifully-lit hallways and spacious elevators, which meant sacrificing room size, whereas the Ritz looks like the hundred and fifty-year-old structure that it is, with hushed, narrow halls and relatively tiny elevators, but far more spacious rooms. Speaking of which…….

Room:

In the CB, we had a “junior suite” with a stunning view of the Seine and the Pont Neuf, truly one of the most unforgettably picturesque vistas we’ve experienced in all our travels, and in itself reason enough for a stay. But this was a “suite” in name only, since to the Spoiled Guest the word means a living space with one or more separate bedrooms, and what we had was a decently-sized king bed room with a small walk-in closet and a small, infinite-mirrored toilet separate from the main bath. Perhaps they mean the narrow seating area overlooking the Seine out the floor-to-ceiling windows to constitute a separate “room,” but that’s stretching things.

View from a junior suite at the Cheval Blanc

The bathroom is second only to the view in impressiveness, with separate bath and spacious shower, Dior amenities (face and body creams, bath oils, etc.) of every description, a wall-sized, floor-to-ceiling window separating it from the bedroom, and smartly-designed storage spaces throughout. In the rooms, the modernity of the CB expresses itself mainly through electronics— push buttons control everything from the several layers of drapes across the mirror-flanked bay window to the descending fabric panel that hides away the sumptuous bathroom if one wants.

However, it’s in the room that the downside of the CB’s location manifests itself in the worst way. Sirens scream from police cars and ambulances zooming up and down the Quai throughout the day and night, disrupting sleep and tranquility despite the extra thickness of the hotel’s outer windows. Bring good ear plugs.

For this reason alone, the Ritz would win the room contest, but at the Ritz we also were given a true suite, with a gorgeous, high-ceilinged bedroom, a bed adorned with pillows embroidered with our initials (which we suspect were retained from our last visit, four years ago), a spacious living room, complete with ornate writing desk and fireplace (non-functioning, but still), and a bathroom just as capacious and luxurious as the stunner offered at CB.

Living room in a Ritz suite

Spa:

We found the spa and fitness facilities functionally indistinguishable, though the vast indoor pool at the Ritz is something to behold, even if you never dip a toe in it. One oddity at the CB was that, while the room is chock-a-block with Dior amenities, none of them are sold in the spa, which seemed commercially negligent but also a source of frustration to my wife, who’d been smitten by the products on offer in the room. We both had wonderful hair treatments at the Ritz salon, adjacent to the spa, and the staff there was charming, casual, and utterly competent.  It’s a draw in the spa category.

Dining and Bar:

The Cheval Blanc has two dining rooms in addition to the impossible-to-book (so we didn’t), haut cuisine Plenitude — the rather casual Le Tout-Paris, and the slightly more formal, Italian-themed Langosteria, both capitalizing on the amazing views from the top of the hotel, and both open to the public for dinner. Both facts contribute to the constant stream of non-guests in both these dining venues, some entering for the sole purpose of snapping a few pics for their social media page before turning and leaving. The one night we had dinner at Le Tout-Paris, the ambiance became so chaotic and “public” that we left early, and breakfasts, though thankfully quieter, were rather haphazardly serviced, with orders forgotten or misunderstood, multiple servers asking the same questions over and over, and merely serviceable food.

The Ritz certainly has its share of random invading “influencers,” but they seem sufficiently cowed by the place to at least try to affect some semblance of civility. Not so, at times, with the decidedly younger and strenuously hipper clientele at the CB.

Still, while our breakfasts at the Ritz were uniformly serene, beautifully executed, and delicious (including perhaps the best French toast I’ve ever indulged in), service at our one dinner in the Bar at the Ritz (a delightful place for early or late drinks, and not to be confused with the Hemingway Bar on the other side of the building, which doesn’t serve meals) was excruciatingly slow and the food undistinguished. We didn’t sample the haut-cuisine venues at either hotel.

So, the question of which hotel to choose —if one has to— comes mainly down to the taste and, probably, the age of the prospective guest. Younger and more etiquette-indifferent clients will be drawn to the style and novelty of the Cheval Blanc, while older guests longing for the gentility and serenity of another era can still find those qualities, carefully preserved and mostly intact, at the Ritz Paris. 

If the SG could stay at only one, it would have to be the Ritz.