Hotel Elephant Park - Most Elephant Bathing View Rooms in Pinnawala

The room was great! we could see the elephants bathing from our room. They have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a menu that will satisfy even a young picky eater.

Having to leave when we did. We wished we had more time to explore the area. There is a little bit of everything for everyone. Walking trails, hiking, shopping, animal interactions.

- Room was OK but balcony was stunning directing overlooking the river where the elephant path. Room was clean and neat with no over whelming. Balcony is a different story by itself. - Views: wow what a view. I think this is the corner stone of such a beautiful place. - People: Staff are really humble and very nice specially Mr. Andrew the activity manager he is really such a very nice helpful person. He made our stay in Pinnawala ten times better. with Mr. Andrews assistance the stay, transportation elephant seeing and everything was just hustle free and so relaxing. So thankful for his amazing personality and kindness. - This is my first visit. But for sure not the last and I am pretty sure I will visit soon. - Food was good with large variety of local and foreign cousins. Staff also were very nice.

The building can be a little bit innovated. but i think they are working on it already. Anyway you can ask the staff any help you want and they are more than happy to help you.

It was such a great experience being so close to the elephants and having our Room overlook the river. All the staff were very helpful and lovely. Andrew was a wonderful guide, and drove us to our next location. We really appreciate all his help. All in all it was a wonderful stay.

The location and the room. And the staff were so nice.

The rooms, whilst quite dated and tired, were clean and functional with lovely view. Breakfast was decent.

There’s were several things I didn’t enjoy about the property, but the main things would be the reception staff and tour coordinator. We travelled on a public holiday, and unbeknown to us, this meant that the elephants would not be coming down at the usual times, and were in fact only making a 20 minute appearance at 2pm. This was not communicated by the hotel. It was fortunate that we arrived at 1pm, rather than the designated check in time of 4pm, as if that had been the case we would have seen no elephants at all. I also felt that the advertising is misleading. The elephants are not there all day, and are elephants brought down from the local orphanage to essentially parade for the public. Some are chained. It doesn’t feel like humane or ethical tourism and I was uncomfortable with the whole thing. In addition to this, mahouts come down to the area to try and get tourists to pay to touch their elephant and have their picture taken with them. The elephants didn’t look healthy and were being prodded with a pointy stick. Furthermore, I was disappointed with the approach to customer service. When we arrived, we were shown to a clinical, glass walled room as we were early. This is despite the fact that the hotel had contacted me the day before to confirm my arrival time so that they could “have the room ready for me”. If I hadn’t complained, I think they’d have left us there (an hour later, a family who arrived at the same time as us were still sat in there). The tour manager was also very pushy and determined to take us to an unspecified location to feed, wash, kiss (?!) and generally pose with elephants. I sought clarification on where this was as I was not willing to support unethical elephant sanctuaries. He would not confirm, but when pushed acknowledged that some elephants would be chained and that they were ‘pets’. I refused his offer.