Hotel Tamarind Tree

Value for money hotel.

I stayed at this hotel as part of a tour. I was quite disappointed for several reasons. I am presuming Covid may have had a big effect on general maintenance etc. My room was dated. The aircon unit which was above the bed leaked onto the pillow. Coffee had been splattered on the wall at some stage and hadn’t been cleaned off the wall. The bar area was closed and furniture stored there The service in the restaurant was poor and we had to ask a few times for a drink or water. Unfortunately most of the staff don’t speak English so that didn’t help

Lovely cool pool front room, spacious and clean. Nice hot shower with good water pressure. Outdoor dining with buffet breakfast and dinner, good selection of food. Kitchen packed takeaway breakfast to take on safari. Quiet complex, pool lovely and clean, plenty of lounges. Would be nice to have an area to lounge with a drink and relax. Overall a pleasant stay.

Spacious room overlooking the large swimming pool. Dinner buffet was splendid and the chicken and macaroni to die for. We can highly recommend a stay when heading for Yala leopard safari. Staff very helpful and we enjoyed every minute of our short stay.

This is a nice hotel, the rooms are very good, there is a lovely pool and the staff were lovely but for a 4* hotel we did feel let down on several occasions. We are reasonably seasoned travellers and know about the things that can happen in Sri Lanka which we are visiting for the third time. One of the main things that went wrong was the transport that the hotel arranged for us from Ella, I had clearly specified in writing that we wanted a vehicle big enough for 4 adults + 4 suitcases + 4 hang baggage when booking several months before. I followed this up, again in writing, a couple of days before our journey with the same information and was assured all was OK. The car that did turn up was way too small, resulting in a wasted journey for the poor guy that had driven for 2.5 hrs to get to us. The manager put the blame on another company for messing up but I think that he should have made sure that the vehicle we were getting was adequate. To his credit the situation was put right but this shouldn’t have happened in the first place. As I’ve said, the hotel itself is very nice indeed. The staff are really lovely but many didn’t speak any English so communication was very difficult when ordering, eg we just avoided having kottu (a Sri Lankan meal) bought to us when all we wanted was a coke. I can understand this is in a one or two star place but for somewhere that portends to be a cut above then I think that the customer can expect to be able to communicate. It was the same with most of the reception staff, some basic training would I think go a long way. Food was ok but I had to send a meal back because the fish I’d ordered was overcooked to the point that it was charred and brittle. The internet was lamentably slow and was frequently non existent. This should not be a problem even in Sri Lanka as we had good connections for the other 6 or so places we stayed of lesser rating. We only had hot water for 1 out of the three nights we stayed, when we mentioned it, it was fixed so probably just someone didn’t turn the water heaters on. Again, we’ve travelled around a bit and stayed in basic hotels and know that things may not materialise as you wish, but when one does decide to splurge a certain standard is expected. We were asked at checkout if our stay was up to standard and we told the person on reception about what had happened, he was obviously senior and spoke reasonable English. To his credit he was very apologetic and we were given some money off our food and drinks bill however we would have much preferred that the hotel lived up to its star rating. With a few tweaks this could be an excellent hotel, so up to the management really to do their bit!

We came from Australia as a family and stayed two nights. Excellent food specially Sri Lankan style rice and curries. Very clean and spacious rooms. Pool is nicely located. Very friendly staff and foods were amazed. Restaurant manger (Mr. Subasinghe was so professional and was helpful) . We definitely recommend the hotel. Thank you Aruna