Kodigahawewa Forest Resort — Hotel in Sri Lanka

AVOID!

We booked this hotel through booking.com where they advertised beautiful bathrooms with hot tubs, 15 minutes to Yalla National Park (for the safari), restaurant, WiFi, in-room service, in-room minibar and soundproof rooms. None of those were available.

The bathrooms were grotty, the bathtubs had no hot water, there was a rusty old shower next to a retrofitted power shower which was the only source of hot water. In one of the rooms the AC was faulty. The restaurant wasn't serving the majority of food on the menu, leaving us with a choice of just penne pasta, garden salad or fried rice for dinner. There were no fridges/minibar in the room that I could find, but they did have tea/coffee. The WiFi didn't work and they couldn't accept credit card payment, so we had to do a separate trip into town to go to an ATM. The rooms were not soundproof.

The gardens are nice, but everything is run down and faulty. When we complained about the AC, my parents were upgraded to the honeymoon suite, which they described as dingy and cave like and it still had no hot water.

The pool looked nice from a distance (we never used it) but it didn't have any sun loungers, seats, nor shade nearby.

The breakfast pack they provided was extremely basic, consisting of two white bread sandwiches with a tiny slither of egg, one banana, one apple and a vanilla milk. We requested a vegan option at least 5 times which they managed for the first trip but failed the next day, leaving my father with very little to eat for most of the day.

The hotel manager was hospitable and tried his best to accommodate us. On the first day he arranged a last-minute safari for us as we arrived late.

Unfortunately he has inherited a rundown, dilapidated hotel, which was clearly in its prime in the 80's. Nevertheless, he still insisted it was 15 minutes to Yalla, so we timed it, and it was 35 minutes. He also advised us to leave at 5.30am for the safari which caused us to miss a lot of quality safari time by having to queue at the entrance (the non-affiliated driver from the day prior told us to leave at 4.30am which would have been much better).

Overall we felt very uncomfortable here and decided to leave after 1 night. The price was higher than competing hotels in the same area, (one of which we stayed at a few months ago and was so much nicer) and they wanted to charge us a fee for early checkout. Thankfully they decided to waive that due to our discontent.

I would not recommend this place to anyone. They need to invest a substantial amount in refurbishing the entire "resort" to bring it up to modern standards. Sadly it feels like they're using the money from unwitting guests to fund...

Built on 35 acres of forestry land. It has 15 cottages and 22 rooms with a good view of the Kodigahawewa lake. The entrance and reception were grand. One can get very close to nature at this resort. In fact, we had an odd experience with frogs in the bathroom. The bathroom was open concept and somehow a bunch of frogs got in. But the staff was kind enough to get them out. ||||The room has an AC, TV and mini bar but when we were there there was no in room wi-fi. It's a good place for bird watching, camping fishing and for lakeside parties. ||||We were the only ones there unfortunately. The reason for this was because the hotel attracts many Chinese tourists at that time of the year and recent bookings had been cancelled due to the pandemic. There was, however a small lakeside party that was happening on the night of our stay. ||||I would like to add that the hotel manager was extremely helpful in helping us sort out issues with our National Park jeep driver.||||We stayed at this hotel primarily because of its location to the National Park but it so happened that the gate we entered from was 45 minutes-1 hour away...

It was my second visit. We had a great time at Kodigahawewa back in 2019. During that time, the Coordinator “Mahesh” was a friendly guy who worked hard to fulfill our requirements. ||Last week, we visited the facility again thanks to Mahesh and his service we had back in 2019. The experience we had when we checked out was horrible. It was a crazy receptionist who didn't know how to respect visitors. As far as I understand, she is acting over the owner and doing whatever she pleases, even ignoring orders from the top management. The other staff, however, were really helpful. I would not recommend visiting Kodigahawewa as I am sure that the STUPID RECEPTIONIST will ruin...