Why We Booked It
My daughter had a field hockey tournament in Reading the next morning, so spending the night somewhere nearby in Reading seemed like a good way to remove a little uncertainty from the weekend. Rather than catching an early train from London, we could travel the evening before, have dinner together, sleep well and arrive at the hockey event relaxed.
The booking also gave me an excuse to use one of the benefits on my Delta SkyMiles Gold American Express card. That is, a $100 rebate against one hotel stay, booked through Delta Stays, once per calendar year. The trip was on our calendar several months in advance, so I was able to apply the 2025 calendar year benefit against this stay, booked into 2026.
The room cost US$138.19. A few days later, American Express refunded US$100 through the card’s annual Delta Stays credit, reducing my effective room cost to US$38.19. Delta also awarded 276 SkyMiles at the time of booking, calculated on the full purchase price rather than the net amount after the statement credit.
At that stage, I thought I understood the economics of the stay. There was more to come.
First Impressions
Five days before arrival the hotel emailed practical information covering parking, swimming pool reservations, restaurant bookings and match-day traffic around Reading FC’s stadium. That wasn’t relevant during our stay, but during home games that information would be very helpful.
It acknowledged exactly what the hotel is. If you’re visiting for football, business nearby or anything around Junction 11 of the M4, the location makes perfect sense. If you’re arriving by train without a car, it is much less convenient.
Apart from the hotel itself and the stadium, there really isn’t anywhere you’d naturally walk for dinner or drinks. Fortunately, the hotel doesn’t leave you needing to. The Atrium Bar and restaurant are large enough, lively enough and good enough that staying in feels like a reasonable choice.
Check-in set the tone nicely. The staff were warm, welcoming and handed us a gift bag with locally made fudge that, we were assured, is something of a Reading institution.
The lobby flows naturally into the restaurant and Atrium Bar.
The Room
From the outside, I wasn’t expecting much. Once inside, the room pleasantly surprised me.
Much better than I’d expected from a hotel beside a football stadium.
Two queen beds still left plenty of space for a seating area and desk, while the bathroom was modern, everything was clean, well maintained and felt recently refreshed.
The open vanity area sits outside the bathroom.
The only thing that didn’t quite match the room was the view. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the corner of the building, giving us wonderfully panoramic views… of an industrial area roundabout and carparks.
Panoramic windows. Less panoramic scenery.
We had to laugh. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was memorable, and in a slightly odd way it summed the hotel up perfectly. This isn’t trying to hide where it is. It’s a hotel built around a football stadium, major roads and nearby businesses, and it does that job well.
Dinner Worked Because It Needed To
Having reduced the net room cost to US$38.19, and with no breakfast or dining credits included, dinner became the most expensive part of the stay.
We spent £150 (about US$204) on food and drinks in the Atrium Bar, comfortably more than the effective cost of the room itself. Breakfast the following morning added another £54 (about US$73) for the three of us. It was a standard UK hotel buffet, but it did everything we needed before a day at the hockey event.
Dinner was surprisingly good.
The Atrium Bar sits beneath a large open central space that gives the hotel far more volume than you’d expect from the outside. Because of its size and open design, it doesn’t need to be busy to feel alive. The open design gives it enough scale to feel interesting with only a handful of occupied tables, while it’s equally easy to imagine the same space handling hundreds of football supporters on a match day.
Given the hotel’s location, that’s important. If you’re arriving by train rather than driving, you’re unlikely to head elsewhere for dinner. Fortunately, we never felt the need to.
Large enough to cope with football crowds without feeling empty on quieter evenings.
The Unexpected Loyalty Stack
Checkout wasn’t quite the end of the story. Because the reservation had been made through Delta Stays, I expected it to behave like most online travel agency bookings. Instead, a trickle of small rewards kept appearing.
The hotel recognized my IHG Platinum status with a 600-point welcome amenity. It then awarded 2,288 base points and 1,372 Platinum bonus points on the £204 (US$277) charged to the room for dinner and breakfast. Paying that bill with my Chase IHG Business card generated another 2,774 IHG points.
A few days later, Delta also credited an additional 230 SkyMiles through a double-miles promotion that happened to coincide with the stay.
In total, the stay produced:
Program | Activity | Earned |
|---|---|---|
Delta | Booking (2x) | 276 miles |
Delta | Promotional bonus | 230 miles |
Delta total | 506 miles | |
IHG | Welcome amenity | 600 points |
IHG | Base + Platinum bonus | 3,660 points |
IHG | Chase IHG Business | 2,774 points |
IHG total | 7,034 points |
I’m not 100% sure why the stay posted this way. My assumption is that while the room itself had been prepaid through Delta Stays, the in-house spending remained eligible once my IHG number had been attached to the reservation, and it also appears the in-house spend was still reported back to Delta Stays even though I paid that bill with a different card.
The numbers are still modest, and I certainly wouldn’t book a hotel hoping for the same outcome. Even so, I couldn’t help smiling when I realized the value of the miles and points earned ended up in roughly the same ballpark as the net cash I’d spent on the room itself. For what began as a straightforward overnight stay before a hockey event, it was an unexpectedly satisfying result.
Would I Stay Again?
The answer would depend on why I was visiting. If I were attending a Reading FC match, working nearby or driving through this part of Berkshire, I’d happily stay here again. The room exceeded my expectations, the staff were excellent, and the restaurant and bar are exactly what this location needs because there are few attractive alternatives within walking distance.
If I were making the same trip from London again, though, I’d probably skip the overnight stay altogether.
We spent a little longer in Reading after the hockey before catching a later train back to London.
Reading is barely half an hour away by train. Once we’d added Uber journeys between the station and the hotel in both directions, much of the convenience we’d hoped to gain had disappeared. Looking back, staying at home and catching an early train would probably have produced much the same result.
That isn’t really a criticism of voco Reading. In fact, the hotel did exactly what it promised. The more useful lesson came from the booking itself. A US$138.19 room became a US$38.19 room thanks to the Delta Stays credit, generated 506 Delta SkyMiles and 7,034 IHG points, and unexpectedly demonstrated that even an online travel agency booking can sometimes produce a better loyalty outcome than the rules might suggest. Which, in the end, was a part of the weekend I hadn’t expected to write about.
Public art near Reading station provided an unexpectedly colorful end to the weekend.