The Beach Hotel, Negombo

Wonderful hotel friendly staff.

We had a fantastic holiday. The breakfast is fabulous. The staff are all extremely good, from the gardeners and security guards, to the waiting staff and front desk, our room cleaners (twice a day!) and of course those of the management that we met and who talked to us at length. Very impressed throughout. We will be back.

The Beach was fine. The main point of the hotel is to be very close to the airport: 20 minutes drive, which allowed me to get some sleep before my 3-hour flight back home leaving at 2am. The bedrooms get most of the noise from the pool and main restaurant below. To get to the pool, one has to go through the lobby and restaurant area, this can lead to seeing a lot of flesh while eating. Most disappointing: the restaurant area is very hot. It is rather uncomfortable. In the morning, the frying egg stand is in the middle of the restaurant area so everybody gets to smell like fried egg. At noon, all the desserts were standing in the 30°C heat; my tiramisu was clearly sour. Small accident: a lassi advertised as sweet was actually very salty - probably use of wrong white powder in the kitchen. But the staff seemed offended more than anything when I signaled the problem; same with the sour tiramisu. No apologies given; offended looks. Overall extremely expensive for what it was. Better deals for the same level of service in Southeast Asia. Food variety not very varied. Set themes in the evening does not allow diners to choose food (or one has to go to the even more expensive restaurant upstairs)