The holiday was booked with private car transfers to and from the hotel with the Aitken Spence group. The vehicle that collected us from the airport was an old dirty minibus, being a taxi driver here in the UK it would not have even passed the licensing test. Rattling and banging was coming from the rear end.

I was totally disgusted that we were collected in this vehicle; I would rather have paid for a taxi than use this companies cars if that is what they use for private car transfers. The driver spoke next to no English and communication was difficult. I booked my holiday with Southall travel on 2nd May; also I paid for the tickets and accommodation there and then. I had to phone this company on the 3rd may to find out when we would get the booking confirmation and the tickets, which I had chosen e-tickets. I emailed and also phoned twice on this day to be told there was a technical problem and don’t worry they would come. That is ok for them to say when they already have over £1400 of my money tied up.

I also phoned again and emailed on the 4th May finally receiving my e-tickets for the flights at 11.31am. I was told to wait a couple of hours and I would get the voucher for the hotel. I finally received that at 19.15pm on the 4th May after phoning again to find out what was happening. We flew on the 5th so there was not much time to lose.
I asked at the time of booking for a beach or pool view, it was suggested that a cabana would suit us, how wrong could someone be, the cabana is a garden type cottage with just one large room and a separate shower room. I nearly fell over backwards when I saw the quality of this room, I wanted to cry, and it was disgusting.

There was hardboard taped up to the ceilings above the lights which was held on or not in this case by sticky tape. All the surfaces were absolutely filthy. The shower and toilet were not clean and there was all stains on the toilet. There were no sun loungers in the garden area of the cabana and the front was more like a mud garden than a garden.

There were no beach views and all we could see was a brick wall and a couple of more cabanas. There is no allocated area to shower and change before your long journey home, they allow you to use the pool shower and that is filthy. I am disgusted at the state of the pool in this hotel, I was actually frightened to touch the edges or go anywhere near the steps. The grime was disgusting and the pool was filthy, It had broken edges and the sides were cracked and raised up. I would not advise anyone with children to go here as I feel that it would be dangerous for them to be around this dirty disgusting excuse for a swimming pool.

The hotel advertises wireless internet and they have internet but only if you pay for it, It works out at about £1.50 per hour, nowhere does it say on their website it is chargeable. As an all inclusive hotel advertising wireless internet I mistakenly presumed it was in with the price. The hotel also advertises gymnasium and this is not true.

They do not have a gymnasium at this hotel. The main air conditioned restaurant they advertise at the hotel is in the corridor and there is no air conditioning. There are crows flying in and out of the restaurant and stealing food from the plates, there is also chipmunks climbing on the tables and the herd of cats that pester you constantly is overwhelming. I do not want to sit and eat my dinner with cats meowing and we even had one of them bleeding from its backside around out table.
There was no water polo as advertised
There was no Beach volleyball as advertised
There was no Beach Football as advertised
There was no disco/nightclub as advertised
There was no Bingo as advertised
There were no indoor games as advertised
There was no karaoke as advertised

There were no magic shows or cultural shows as advertised In fact their website is totally misleading and I think it should be shown to trading standards for them to investigate.

They also advertise an unspoiled private access beach. This hotel has not got a private beach. It has private access to a public beach. The beach sellers drive you mad. It did not matter how many times I told
them I did not wish to buy anything from them they just continued to pester us.

It was so bad that we tried for 3 hours on our first full day and then again for 2 hours the second day and then we gave up on the beach and never stepped foot on it again. There was also hundreds of people on this beach as it had full public access and was used by the sri lankans on a daily basis to come and the locals had large gatherings during the week and even more at weekends.