Reef Garden Polhena in Matara

I am working in tourism for 25 years. I booked Reef garden through Booking.com and google reviews by expecting something not very good but this was even worse than everything possibile. Actually , i would suggest Sri Lanka government to punish this place for giving such low quality service to the guests of the hotel. When I arrived , they said that we can’t see your reservation, than ok we will give you a room. They took us to a villa which is another building of hotel but it doesn’t look so. Because we were tired and it was hot and booked only one night . I said ok, let’s stay..at least we can use the pool. Pool is the only advantage of this hotel , and it is not in very good condition with broken tiles. The room was awful for a 60 dollars room. Dirty, old, air condition was working good to keep away mosquitos. There are geckos on the wall. Beds are old. Bathroom was just ok. Floor is always dusty and dirty. You will see from the photos. I could slept only few hours to be alive from mosquito attacks. In the morning , there was a breakfast like a joke. When I asked about the breakfast , they said it is buffet. But this buffet is composed of only butter , a bowl of jam , 2 plates of fruits and 3 plates of Sri Lankan stuffs. Another disadvantage of the hotel is the Russians. They are like grasshoppers, attacking all the food in seconds. And of course the staff is out of tourism world. They barely speak English. They serve very slow and you are struggling with crows, dogs outside area. Anyway , all in all, this hotel requires only 1 star here as there is no 0..only thing about the hotel which can be positive is the location close to public beach of polhena but it is also very crowded and sometimes dirty. And one more thing about the staff , they need to make more practice in tourism if they don’t want to see complaints. Reception girl can’t speak English. Manager looks like a fugitive from prison. And they dared to ask money to make late check out. Never ever this hotel. If you are a European stay far from this hotel, find a good hostel or another hotel..

I personally travelled to this hotel from the 07th of Sep to the 8th September and I must say it was a disaster. The moment we entered two Air conditioning machines were taken down from the rooms leaving us to stay at different rooms from the one we booked (we called them and booked the rooms we wanted from stating the room numbers as the beds in the other rooms are noy good at all ) On the 8th of September while I was in the shower at 11.45 the entire hotel ran out of water for about approximately 1 hour and the manager Kasun was giving out silly excuses and his behaviour was not professional at all. The hotel was fully booked for the above said days and he wasn't ready to cater to such a crowd. The management is extremely poor and disastrous. The hotel yet again ran out of water at around 2 p.m. but this time was for good. And they offered to refund our money and informed us to move into another hotel they had arranged. However this process was draining and disastrous as changing from one place to another especially unplanned and due to poor management is very different. Also to mention the pool tiles are broken and there were guests who were injured because of this.

However I must mention the supporting or the minor staff was very generous helpful and hospitable during the visit and during our complete stay. They treated all guests with kindness even at the disastrous moment when their manager Kasun was hiding by putting them on war front without finding a proper solution nor attending to any guest inquiring.

This place is disastrous not value for money poorly maintained and I would definitely advise nobody to visit here and stay unless you want to spend your vacation on the edge and to wonder whether water will be there for your complete showering process once you enter in to a bathroom 😁