Garton's Cape — Hotel in Sri Lanka

The staff at this hotel were brilliant and really did try to help us enjoy our stay however the facilities that they were given to work with were just insufficient. ||||We booked a double room and a twin room and the ‘twin room’ turned out to just be a double bed with a camp bed next to it. When we asked about this, the staff were incredibly helpful and offered to move a proper single bed into the room. The bed linens and towels were all dirty and stained and when we requested new ones, they also arrived stained and dirty. The doors to enter the room are incredibly flimsy and did not leave me feeling safe as I felt that anyone could have just kicked them down despite them being locked. ||||The bathrooms in both rooms were outdated and not up to standard. The double room had a bath with broken taps and a shower hose attached to the taps that supposedly equates to a ‘shower’. There was no shower screen so you had to sit in the bath and hold the shower hose to wash as you couldn’t even run a bath. The shower in the twin room wasn’t much better. The water oscillated between boiling hot and freezing cold so you couldn’t stay under it for more than a few seconds. ||||Upon arrival there were four power cuts within the first hour. This is understandable as the hotel manager said that this was out of their control and was down to the grid however this might just be something to keep in mind. ||||The beach area is lovely and private and has kayaks and a volleyball net to play with. The pool however is much smaller than it appears on the photos and there is an extensive list of rules next to it that outline rules like ‘no playing’. It isn’t big enough to properly swim in either so was quite disappointing. ||||The facilities they offer were also not up to standard. There was a pool table but the cues didn’t have tips so you couldn’t use it. The room with the ping pong table didn’t have air conditioning so you could only stay in there for a few minutes. The gym only had an exercise bike. ||||The food was also disappointing. The cooked breakfast was stone cold and the options were incredibly limited. The dinner wasn’t very nice at all and was extremely expensive for what we were given. ||||The last thing I would like to mention is that I did not feel safe in the room. During the night I heard banging on the balcony window followed by what sounded like a lock clicking and being fiddled with. Once I sat up and turned on my phone light it stopped. I can’t be certain that there was anybody there as I didn’t actually see anyone but I was sufficiently frightened. I wasn’t going to mention this but after reading other reviews with similar complaints I thought I would mention it. ||||We booked for 4 nights but ended up leaving after just 1 night. I wouldn’t recommend this hotel at all despite the staff being lovely and...

This is all but a 5 star hotel!!! I booked this place last April during my trip to Sri Lanka and it was one of the worst hotel I visited in my life. On booking, they put beautiful pictures of the suite room with a jacuzzi and the sea view : this is FAKE! The jacuzzi was not there, it was replaced by a bathtub and the view on the sea ? forget about it, it's blocked with a blurry sticker. If it was only that, the stay could still be okay but that was just the beginning of the problems... I wanted to have a massage as it was a rainy day so I booked one. At the time of the massage, I go to the "SPA" as they call it but it's not a SPA at all, I let you see on the enclosed picture, it was a small and dirty room, I was shocked from the standard I expected from a 5 star hotel. I canceled the massage obviously as the SPA was nothing but relaxing and pleasant atmosphere. At night, I felt cold following sunburn but I realized there was no duvet in the room. I called the reception and the room service, no reply, I started to look by myself in the room and when I opened the closet, a huge cockroach jumped on me, in a 5 STAR HOTEL and I DID NOT LEAVE ANY DOOR OR WINDOW OPEN! It was in a closet... I went down to the reception asking for a solution, there was no one, just the maintenance team who called the manager on the phone for me. The manager was so rude, said that nothing can be done and that I have to sleep in this room as it is. Needless to say I was shocked because this is not the service and experience you expect booking a 5 star hotel. I was tired, sunburnt and emotional, started to cry as it was nearly 2am and I had an excursion booked in the morning at 6am and my night was ruined because of this hotel. I decided to calm down and take a bath to try to sleep... guess what : NO HOT WATER, only cold one and here again.... another cockroach! The breakfast was not qualitative, it was not fresh which is a shame for a place like Sri Lanka with amazing local food. It was full of flies everywhere. I took my luggage early morning and just run away...

The staff were very welcoming and helpful - they tried their best with everything and also tried to rectify anything that wasn’t right. However the resources they had to work with were not up to scratch. We had asked for a twin room for the kids but when we arrived there was a double bed and a camp style bed - we did ask about this and they agreed to move a proper single bed into the room the next day. The views from the hotel were lovely and the beach area was clean and private. The pool is much smaller than it looks on the photos and doesn’t allow games - not really enough room to swim properly either so wouldn’t recommend for family’s - lots of rules! They do have kayaks however the lifeguard wasn’t there so we couldn’t use them. There is a beach volley ball court. The ping pong table was good but air conditioning was broken so couldn’t play more than one game. ||We were put into a panoramic room - whilst the view was lovely the towels and bed linen was dirty with stains on both. We requested new towels which they brought but still had marks and brown stains on. The bathroom had a bath only in it with a shower hose to the taps - but no shower screen so couldn’t stand up for a shower and the tap was broken so couldn’t run a bath either. Very dated bathrooms. ||The food wasn’t good - all the food at breakfast was cold (including cooked food)and evening meal and wasn’t good and poor quality. Hotel is not convenient to walk anywhere. Bar upstairs and games room was too hot to sit in as no air conditioning and the pool table you couldn’t play on as the cues had no tips. ||Gym only had an exercise bike. ||You couldn’t stay here for an extended stay - the facilities are not good enough. I would not recommend this hotel - you are better off going to a larger hotel chain. ||We checked out after one night and moved to a different hotel in Galle which was excellent and confirmed that Gartons Cape was not...