Radisson SAS Hotel & Spa (Cork)

This is based on visiting for a conference (unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to book a room to stay, which altered my experience).
Firstly, location. Good if you have a car so can drive there (with free parking), not so good if having to commute from the town (11km and a € 22 taxi ride away!)
Food — as it was a conference, the whole hotel was taken over, so the only lunch available was the conference food they provided (and it’s too far to go for anything else). At € 12, we expected something nice, but found we had no options, just a small bowl of vegetable soup (no roll or butter provided), followed by some sandwiches (the first lot seemed like they had seen better days, the second were fresher, but all had limited options, all meat, cheese and tomato), and finally followed by tea or coffee. Service wasn’t great — I realise it was busy, but we had to keep getting up to ask for food/​cutlery/​glasses for the table.
So recommendations if you do attend a conference here. Firstly, get in early and book a room in the hotel so you don’t have to travel in and out everyday. Drive down (easy to get to than by public transport). Finally, don’t expect to be able to go for a quick stroll from the hotel round Cork as you’ll have to take some form of transport to get there.

So this is a business hotel, if you’re on vacation I’d stay somewhere else. As far as business hotels go I was very happy with the Radisson. The room was large, clean and bed was very comfortable. The breakfast in the morning was great, it is a buffet breakfast with huge selection. The restaurant here is also of a very high standard and a 2 course meal was included in the price of the room for the first night. The best point about this hotel was the swimming pool. The pool has a large selection of jets to massage every part of your body, just the thing after a stressful day. The steam room and sauna weren’t great.

Sadly this is the Radisson Hotel that I’ve liked least. The location is not great, its in a business park quite a distance from Cork along the riverside. The hotel is itself even hard to find once you’re in the business park — many little roundabouts had me confused. Good luck finding a taxi late at night!
The room was alright, but it overlooked the roof which had litter on it. Bit depressing. Standard Radisson buffet breakfast. The reception were friendly, but the business centre they referred me to had a clunky computer and printer that I eventually gave up and decided to print in town.
The hotel’s saving grace should be the gym and swimming pool, which were nice. However, it would be really useful if they told you ahead of time that you need a swimming cap to use the pool. Either that or sell them /​give them away there. Apparently it is common in Ireland to require a cap at public pools, but I’m not Irish nor a mind-​reader.
Having said all this, its still a high standard hotel.