Goldi Sands Hotel

This was my third stay at the Goldi Sands, honestly, the last time was nearly 20 years ago but I had such a great time back then I had high expectations. In the intervening 20 years, the hotel has had a revamp, double the size, double the number of swimming pools, added an elevator and they've removed the beach-fronted bungalows. All of which I think was a smart move and well worth doing. What has changed is the service and the catering. The staff are of course all very polite just that they didn't go the extra mile like they used to. We arrived late as our flight had been delayed, all I wanted was a couple of bottles of beer, they did arrive but I almost had to beg. I booked a taxi to the airport with the front desk, but they forgot, the waitresses at dinner were all about the hard upsell rather than serving. The breakfast as far as my memory serves me used to be awesome, today's breakfast is the same every day and lacks imagination, is poorly presented, and includes the worst coffee ever. The hotel has a confusing number of tariffs from all-inclusive to room only which means if you want to buy a drink it takes forever as they have to check your "status" and then if you pay cash they have to go to the cashier as they carry no float. The rooms are a good size, clean and comfortable but basic. All in all it is still a good hotel to choose but sadly it is no longer in the memorable category.

Schönes Hotel direkt am Strand, gutes Preis Leistung Verhältnis

Greeted well on arrival. Arrived early in the morning and happy to allow us in our room early. Lovely big room with balcony. Clean, comfortable beds, good air con, free water tea, coffee etc in room. 2 pools all clean and tidy. Located on the beach and near shops and restaurants.

The last hotel in the list of many after touring Sri Lanka for 3 weeks. Quick checkin amongst a big group. Had to ask how to get to our room. First impressions busy, tired hotel, furniture in lobby stained, lots of people around the pool and beach. Our room was 2 single beds with no mattress protectors, the sheets came off within minutes. We pushed the beds together, asked for a double sheet and this worked better. The safe didn’t work and it took several attempts to work out it was faulty wiring. All fixed. The shower button was broken, eventually we fixed it with a peg to secure the button to stay on. The rooms were roomy, the dressing table top very stained and sticky. Again tired, but clean and housekeeping very attentive. We had lunch in the restaurant, pretty standard fare, busy and had to go and find staff to order. We tried room service for lunch which was great from ordering to arrival. Breakfast was crazy with the standard buffet, people not waiting, pushing in etc. The 2nd day we didn’t go and went elsewhere. Dinner one night was included, we got there right on time as again extremely busy, lots of upselling by staff for cocktails. Buffet again. It’s obviously a very popular package hotel with lots of foreign clientele, return customers and long term customers. I enjoyed the beach walks, relaxing by the pool. Hearing all the different accents, we did sleep well despite the duf duf music each night. A great location to walk to shops, restaurants etc.

We arrived at 8 pm and our room wasn't ready and we had to wait an hour before we could get in. The hotel feels old and tired. The air conditioner didn't get cool enough although they did work on it and it was better the second night. On departure we discovered that we owed them for breakfast. It was my mistake but I asked them if as a courtesy for the one hour wait on arrival they could comp me the breakfast. They claimed they had upgraded our room to compensate us but we were staying in the old part of the hotel so that simply wasn't true. All in all it was an unpleasant experience.

We spent only one night at Goldi Sands but wish we had more time to explore this hotel. Beautiful property right on the beach with a HUGE pool and large buffet area. The rooms were spacious and clean, check-in staff were very attentive and kind (not so much for restaurant/bar staff, see below). We had an early morning flight to catch and they were able to arrange for some vegetarian breakfast boxes to take with us. Two things that could have been better: 1) Food: Buffet items were not clearly labelled as veg/non-veg, and there were limited vegetarian options in the dinner buffet. 2) Drinks/bar service: We wanted to take a drink to our room but bar service was terrible--we waited over 10 minutes standing at the bar and while there were multiple wait staff going back and forth, we were completely ignored. Eventually after we asked multiple times, one staff member pointed us to a separate counter on the lawn where he tried to convince us to get the cocktail special (I just wanted a glass of wine). The drinks ended up being extremely overpriced given the size of the pours (LKR 1400 for a rum and diet coke, and about the same for ＜120ml of house red).