Sigiriana Resort by Thilanka

Dirty and old room with lots of mosquitoes in the room. Slow service, called the front desk many times. Worst experience was the Christmas party where they were blasting the music until 1am in the morning. Our room is 10m away from the DJ and our kids couldn’t fall asleep until the middle of the night.

As someone who has visited quite a few places abroad and locally, I have never visited the hotel that was so well thought out from construction and where the owners put a lot of love and care into the creation of the property. That is tremendously let down by the distasteful lack of service and cost cutting by the management company, which in this case is Thilanka. Starting off with the welcome, the security attendant was not bothered and just directed us to another place. No welcome towels or ease of check in. As a local group we were treated as some sort of unwanted vagabonds. Upon check in, out of 6 rooms, 5 were checked in and a single was not. The front office manager Hasintha was rude and just said hotel policy is 2 pm check in. He did not offer any apology, any reason and he didn't make any effort to correct the situation. When we went to the rooms there was no linen, no bath mats, no amenities. We informed the reception and they reverted that the linen was in the laundry so therefore there aren't any towels! We made it a point to inform the GM and to try and rectify the situation. He did get the housekeeping to provide the linen. Along with a few amenities and this was appreciated. However this was followed up with even shoddier service from the hotel staff. The lunch was a cheap cost cutting approach of just a sri lankan lunch, with barely any meats. The same can be said for the breakfast, which was mediocre. The place is very overstaffed, but nobody is actually doing anything or making an actual effort. The management don't seem to be concerned. The 24 hour reception seemed to be closed at 10 30 pm. We were yelling for a staff member and a dishevelled individual came out, we requested for some water and he just informed they had run out of water! We were obviously irate so we started making a fuss, at which point he called the housekeeping department and we suddenly got water. The next day when we asked for toothpaste or a dental kit they informed they don't provide those. However for the foreigners they are provided with all the necessary amenities. I understand if they don't want to stock it, but if you call the reception and ask for a dental kit, it is completely unprofessional to refuse and just state that they don't issue them. The good things are about the property is the maintenance and the landscaping. However the service and food is what really destroys the reputation Its dissapointing because the property looks like it was a great property that is ruined by bad management. Cheap ideas like cutting off the air conditioning in the restaurant and just switching on the fans and opening the windows in the scorching weather is just short term gains, and affecting the future of the property. The construction and fittings have been done with care. However the property staff needs to have a major change in their approach to customer service.

This was our favourite hotel of the trip! Our family of 4 were separated into two huge rooms by a balcony so we were easily able to spend time in each others rooms. The rooms were very clean and comfortable. We used the swimming pool on a couple of occasions and my children enjoyed watching the birds and widlife whilst in the water! I indulged in a spa treatment that was also very nice. The restaurant had plenty to choose from and also had wonderful views over the paddy fields. Plenty of wildlife to spot including giant squirrels, Lizards, palm squirrels and birds. Thank you so much for a wonderful start to our holiday!