We used this hotel a week ago for a friend's Hen Day. She booked a Spa package through a third party provider, and it was this hotel that they sent us to. As the Renaissance is a small chain owned by Marriott Hotels, we were looking forward to a good night away.

Upon arrival, we headed for the hotel car park, only to be put off by a notice on the car park sign instructing us that we should report to reception first. We turned the car round, and left the car in a valet space outside the hotel while we checked in to reception. We came out expecting to put the car into a private hotel car park, as per The Renaissance's own signs, only to be told by the porter that it was a shopping centre car park, which the hotel used (at the end of my stay the hotel would stamp the car park ticket so I wouldn't have to pay car parking fees). So it turned out that my car would be in a public car park without security overnight. I wasn't particularly happy about this (had I known this I would have got a lift to Reading) but the doorman was very obliging and allowed me to leave the car in the valet parking area during our stay. The valet parking area was a private underground car park of just 30 spaces located across the road from the hotel. Usually you'd have to pay to have the doorman park the car in this area for you - I think my cheeky smile worked wonders on hiim and I was grateful to it. I had checked the hotel website before I'd gone to and had always thought they had their own car park - to find it was a share of the public car park next door was disappointing and irritating to say the least.

Check-in was very easy, and we chose not to leave a credit card registered on our room for any subsequent requirements that we might have. An early check-in had been requested, and we were pleased to see that we could check into our room at 11am.

Our room was a twin room, which contained two double beds, with a TV at the foot of them in a cabinet. There was a desk also in the room with a couple of comfortable chairs. By the door to the room was a small wardrobe, and the bathroom was by the door to the right. There wasn't really any drawer space in the room, which would have been a problem possibly if we were staying for longer than one night. The room was clean and bright but was beginning to show signs of requiring modernisation: decor was outdated and a little faded. Again though, more than sufficient for a night's stay.

The bathroom was clean and provided some complimentary toiletries made by Lather. I've never heard of them but I do know that some of the other girls in the party quite enjoyed them! There was a crack in the sink which at some point had been filled (quite badly) and there was a dirty water line in the toilet bowl, which suggests again that the hotel was ready for an overhaul in some areas.

The spa housed a large swimming pool, a sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and a gym. The gym was above the swimming pool at the back of the spa area and wasn't air conditioned. Being higher up than the pool it was quite warm in there. It was also small, so while there was a good variety of machines there weren't many of them. The gym had it's own members too as well as being open to the hotel guests, so once more than five people were in there it became quite busy.

I must admit, we thought that the spa area was incredibly badly laid out. The pool was 17m long, and took up all the space that it was in, so that there was very limited space around the pool for seating. When we arrived there were already three other groups at the spa who had been given seating areas to themselves, and we were left with four chairs between seven of us stuck on the edge of the pool.
Another group was sat by the jacuzzi and you had to creep around them every time you wanted to go past - due to the lack of seating we decided that they would have been better to build a smaller pool and provide a larger and more comfortable seating area.

The sauna was in the changing room area of the spa, and was actually very nice. Unfortunately though for the size of spa it was quite small - would probably only happily seat six people.

One issue we did have with the spa is that they couldn't issue us with robes for our use for the day. We requested them when we went in but were told that because we hadn't prebooked them then they couldn't provide them. This seemed quite ridiculous given that we had booked a package to include the spa and the hotel knew we were coming - they should have been able to work out that we would need the robes. Unfortunately the third party supplier of our package hadn't given us this information.

As the hotel is situated in the centre of Reading, we went out afterwards to a small club. There were two door staff acting as security, and as we came back into the hotel they kept an eye on two of our party who had stopped to chat outside with a couple of men they'd picked up. This was very impressive, and made us feel very safe. This feeling was compromised the following day when I was taken over by a member of the hotel reception team to pick up my car: the door was opened and he left me to go down into the underground garage alone to collect my car: yet when the door opens it's open for some time and any one could have followed me in or been locked in when the door had been opened previously.