Garner Hotel Reading City Centre by IHG
A quieter city-centre stay near the museum
About this hotel
Garner Hotel sits four minutes' walk from Reading Museum, in the heart of the city centre rather than out on the M4 corridor with most of Reading's other hotel stock. It runs smaller than the larger IHG properties nearby, which gives it a quieter, more boutique-leaning feel while still carrying air conditioning, a fitness centre and a bar restaurant. It's roughly forty-one minutes from Heathrow by taxi. For a group that wants a central base without the scale and noise of a full conference hotel, it's a solid middle ground. It won't suit a full society given the tighter room count, but for a smaller group it offers central Reading without the noise and scale of a full conference hotel down the road.
- Air conditioning
- Fitness center
- Bar restaurant
- Full-service laundry
Our take
This suits a smaller group or a couple who want central Reading without the size of the bigger chain hotels nearby. It's quieter and more personal, though a larger society will find the room count tighter than at the Holiday Inn or Novotel down the road. It's a smaller, more personal alternative to the Holiday Inn and Novotel properties covered elsewhere on this list.
- Book ahead for weekend stays, since the smaller room count fills faster than the larger city-centre hotels.
- Walk to Reading Museum on a free afternoon rather than driving for such a short distance.
- City-centre parking can be tighter than the larger chain hotels, so confirm space directly before arrival with a full group.
Why we love it
- Four minutes' walk to Reading Museum itself
- Quieter, more boutique-leaning atmosphere than the chains
- Fitness centre genuinely used between rounds
- Central position without a large hotel's scale
Why guests love itWe were only four of us, and Garner Hotel felt right-sized in a way the bigger chain hotels down the road didn't — quieter corridors, an easy four-minute walk to Reading Museum for the one afternoon we skipped golf, and a bar restaurant that never felt overrun the way a full conference hotel's can. It felt noticeably quieter than the bigger chain hotels we'd stayed at nearby, in a way that suited our smaller group well.