We recently visited the Royal Berkshire Hotel, Ascot which along with Fanhams Hall makes up the ‘venues’ arm of Exclusive Hotels.
The Royal Berkshire Hotel is a red bricked Queen Anne mansion dating back to 1705. Originally built for the Churchill family and is situated in 15 acres of landscaped gardens.
As an Exclusive venue the hotel has been adapted to inspire and generate creativity and ideas. The Royal Berkshire Hotel specialises in training, meetings and residential conferences.
The Hotel has 63 bedrooms – approximately half of the bedrooms have been refurbished (which are lovely) we saw these and also the older style bedrooms. Whilst these are perfectly acceptable corporate groups do tend to prefer to have their delegates in the same standard of rooms so it will be nice when they all have been refurbished.
Three are 11 meeting and function rooms of all shapes and sizes. A fully equipped business centre and a break-out Energy Zone with retro computer games (think pac-man!!) coffee machines, home-made treats, Ipads and large flat screens.
The largest room is the Berkshire an almost L shaped room which initially we thought could be tricky to use for conferences. However we saw the room set up for a conference taking place the next day and the space was utilised very well. Maximum numbers are 200 theatre style or 150 for a dinner. This room opens out onto a terrace and has access to the lovely grounds.
The other meeting rooms are colour coded rooms; green,white, blue which offer the very highest level of quality technology. Their newest meeting room has recently been converted from the old swimming pool aptly called Aqua – one of our favourite rooms.
The Library is a more traditional and is ideal for private dining along with the Colonel Horlicks Room (named after a former resident and yes related to that famous hot drink !)
The Royal Berkshire Hotel lends itself very well for an exclusive use event and being close to Heathrow and the M25 is in a great location.
Thanks Hannah for showing us around.
