Hotel Flower Garden in Unawatuna

We had a terrible experience at Flower Garden Hotel.
My wife, our daughter, and I arrived with a fully prepaid and confirmed reservation. The booking status clearly showed “confirmed,” and the payment had already been processed. However, upon arrival, we were told that our reservation had been cancelled. We received no prior notification, no email, no message — absolutely nothing.
The staff made no real effort to resolve the situation. We were not offered an alternative room, no assistance with finding another hotel, and no compensation. We were left in the evening with a child and no place to stay in a foreign country. This is completely unacceptable.
It strongly appears that the hotel practices overbooking or cancels reservations to resell rooms at higher prices. There is no other reasonable explanation for such behavior.
We had to urgently find another hotel for the night. The next day, we returned because we were told that the manager, Shan, would arrive at 10:00 AM and check if any rooms were available. We waited for over an hour — he never showed up. His assistant refused to call him on his personal number to clarify when he would arrive. Once again, we left with no solution.
What is even more concerning is that we spoke with current guests who were checking out the following day, yet the hotel still refused to accommodate us in those soon-to-be available rooms. No clear explanation was ever provided regarding why our booking was cancelled or why we were not informed in advance.
This experience showed a complete lack of professionalism, responsibility, and basic respect for guests. If a hotel confirms and accepts payment for a reservation, it must honor it or at the very least provide a proper solution.
I strongly do not recommend this hotel, especially for families with children. You risk being left without accommodation despite having a confirmed and paid booking.

Firstly, hotel wanted to give us a room, where didn't work conditions and refrigerator. After they show moreover worst room in the building where smells bed fish. We need to pay more to have normal room. In the end they made a mistake giving to taxi-company my number of phone not neighbours, but I didn't ask about taxi and had already paid other transfer. We paid another 70$ for transfer by there taxi, because his driver came first and we thought he is our one. No responsibility for their mistakes😔

In my two weeks of stay in Sri Lanka, this was the absolutely worst hotel. Very shabby, worn down and not at all worth the price.

1. We booked a deluxe double room from Agoda, which mentions garden view, but the room given to us was one on first floor, with no privacy and was nothing compared to the photos. It was in a dire condition.

2. They offered us upgrade but at the cost of 30 USD for 3 nights to a “Super deluxe cabana” room, we had no other option but to accept as the room provided was not liveable.

3. The room was moldy, bathroom fittings were missing and the bathtub had cracks on the floor. Moreover the bathtub was clogged. When we complained they shifted us to another room.

4. There is no wifi in this hotel.

5. Breakfast was horrible, bland sphagetti everyday, service was poor.

6. They do not provide any toiletries, even on asking.

Rooms were spacious though, and location is great, close to the beach, restaurants and shops.
Overall totally not worth 70 USD a night, maybe 30 USD a night max.

I would not book this accommodation again. We were given a room on what was described as “the other side,” which felt more like a storage area than a hotel (see photos). Breakfast was included, but after the first time we did not want to eat it again, as it was not good.

The building where our room was located smelled terrible — I don’t know if it was due to fish tanks or something else. There were a large number of mosquitoes in the room, as well as cockroaches. The common areas were cluttered with various items. The view from the balcony looked like construction barracks.

The cleaner came every morning at 8 a.m., knocking on the door (and waking us up) to ask whether we wanted housekeeping that day. The refrigerator froze everything we put inside. The shower had very poor water pressure and was almost broken.

The air conditioning, however, was good and worked well and the location was good, close to everything.

I'm sorry to say that there was no care during the day we spent there, I think because the water came out rusty. We didn't even have a way to wash our faces. I'm sorry to say that you should also be aware of this before you go.