We used Watura for our annual company retreat with families at the end of July 2025. As our company has a policy to only use 5-star graded hotels for retreat activities, and also since no one had been to this place, we thought it would be a great pick for the trip this year! I’ll put the positives first and then mention several issues personally and my family faced as feedback. Positives: Great location between the river and the sea. Most of the staff were friendly and tried their best to serve the best with limited resources. The spa treatment we got was great, kudos to the staff. Allowed to check out late, as our spa treatment was at a late time. The water activity area for the kids was pretty awesome. If you and kids love water stuff, this is great. Spacious and big rooms with high roofs. The bar staff were very helpful in providing the team with facilities to have a very late sing-along session. Negatives: This property doesn’t have an elevator. It was a very young guy (17 years at that time when asked), who had to carry two of our bags, of which one was quite heavy. We were upset about his plight and offered to take it or support him, but he politely refused and managed. No buffet! Even though it was a big company team with families, they refused to accommodate buffets at any meal of the day. Therefore, we had issues finding something to give to our kid. Starters/ bread were mundane in every meal and were not freshly baked. Most of the other ala-carte food was also not great. The towels we had in the rooms had holes! See the attached images. This was a first for my family in any level hotel in Sri Lanka, leaving aside a place supposedly proclaimed as 5-star. We noticed a very weird thing happened on the same day we checked in. We went out for our boat ride and returned to the room around 6 PM. When we opened the door, there were 3 room guys (young ones as I mentioned above) doing some things under dim light in the bathroom. We never expected (nor asked) any room service on the very day we checked in! Come on, what more would you need after 4 hours of your check-in? The room should be fully turned around properly! All our clothes and accessories were at large and we felt very awkward, and we demanded that they leave. When they left, we found they had even folded and kept my wife’s and kid’s (a girl) underwear, which made us very awkward about the privacy and very uncalled for. I complained about this to the front office, who first denied any error by saying that since it’s a boutique-like hotel, they do frequent room services, and later had to accept the grave errors, saying she will look into this. Apparently, it turned out that the room was not properly turned around for us when we checked in, although the living areas were tidied and those boys had come to continue the rest, including refilling of the toiletries, and again they failed this time also by focusing on other things like folding the underwear! It was a case of a lack
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