Pleasant, clean, comfortable and good location. Very slightly let down by the state of repair (e.g. could do with replacement door locks) but only a small gripe, and it's a nicer hotel than many of the chains. Good advance prices as well.

I stayed at Belle Vue Hotel for 5 nights on Bed and Breakfast basis. The hotel is a 5 minute walk from Reading West station and about 10 minutes from Reading Town Centre.

Check in was straightforward and I was given a room on the first floor. The room itself was not huge but adequate, the single bed was extremely comfortable. There were tea/coffee facilities and biscuits and also a bottle of mineral water and these were replenished daily, a wall mounted TV with a handful of channels. The free WIFI was useful. In the room was a book of hotel amenties and services in the local area.

Considering the room was fairly small there was a lot of storage space and plenty of coat hangers in the fitted wardrobe. The bathroom was on the small side but the shower was powerful and toiletries were provided and these were regularly replenished

Breakfast was excellent and was taken in the dining room, where there was a selection of cereals, fresh/tinned fruit, yogurts, juice and coffee laid out buffet style while toast and cooked breakfast are prepared to order.

This is a good, central hotel for Reading town centre and there is ample parking. I would happily stay again.

The manager is a gossip and at every opportunity to engage in a conversation would make derogatory remarks about her clients to the extent that I even thought about changing my hotel rather than face her in the mornings.

The TV did not work properly in that there were very few channels and most were in black and white and fuzzy.

The shower was tepid at best.

I really didn't want to bring these issues to to the manager's attention because I just couldn't face her.

The place has apparently been renovated but anaglypta and wood chip wallpaper painted in magnolia doesn't really cut my mustard.

The rooms are creaky and very noisy.

Breakfast is ok but will not win any awards.

The experience was very much that of an ‘unreformed’ B&B.

The bedroom was from a conversion of a room at the front of the hotel. The room was evidence of the smallest possible amount of money having been spent years ago creating it, followed by minimal outlay on its maintenance or updating. The decor was depressing, with beige painted woodchip wallpaper throughout and an Artex coated ceiling with feature eyesore of a clumsy repair (a water leak presumably had brought down part of the ceiling sometime in the past). The bedroom and bathroom windows had been left single glazed and so the rooms were noisy from the traffic.

There appeared to have been minimal attention to maintenance. The clothes hook was missing from the bathroom door. There was nowhere in the bathroom to hang towels or clothes. There was no shelf in the bathroom for wash kit or cosmetics. The sink plug was broken. The sink drain pipe was blocked so it took ages to drain. There appeared to be a water pressure problem with the shower as it struggled to work efficiently.

As our stay was at the weekend, there were no cooked breakfasts (a fact not communicated to us when we booked) and instead guests were provided with ‘continental’ food, including sealed in plastic inferior pixie sized substitutes for croissant and brioche together with vacuum sealed pieces of long life processed cheese, but at least there was some fresh fruit available and there was plenty of tea and coffee.

Neither the accommodation nor the breakfast justified the cost of £65 when there are town centre budget hotels and other B&Bs charging the same price that offer better designed and well maintained accommodation and a better breakfast (whether it's a weekend or not).