Hotel Elephant Park

Overall hotel was very good, this is one of best location in Pinnawela if you or kids would like to see real elephant or elephant bathing .

We stayed at this hotel for 1 night . Family with 3 young children. Staff was great! Very welcoming - with refreshing drinks when we arrived (just like needed after along journey) and gifts for the kids when we left. Room is very clean and has all you need. The major peace is the balcony watching towards the river where you can see the eplephants bathing morning and after noon . The pool space is so beautiful with the “infinity” pool to stay and watch the elephants, the sunset. Located just at the end of the shopping street where the elephants march to get to the river - it’s a perfect location !

The view and service was exceptional. Very welcoming

Perfect location, ruined by hotel endorsed spice garden scam and insulting activities manager. Had a terrible experience with *** the activities and transport manager. He arranged a day of activities for us which included a free visit to the local spice garden Luck Uyana, where we had a very convincing and seemingly informative tour and demonstration of all natural, traditional Sri Lankan herbal medicinal products. Following the tour, we spent 49,000lkr ($210 AUD!) on all natural, herbal medicinal creams and oils which we had been shown and sampled during the tour, bought for ourselves and as gifts. When we got back to the hotel I decided to try the all natural traditional hair removal cream but as soon as I opened the jar I smelt the unmistakable stink of cheap chemical hair removal cream Nair. I had paid $90 AUD for a about $5 AUD worth of pure chemical Nair that had been dyed yellow and repackaged. The saffron pigmentation corrector cream was the exact same colour and no doubt was just cheap moisturised dyed yellow, and our pure sandalwood oil a blend of cheap plant oils and more! We understand it was our own naivity for getting scammed however we didnt expect the hotel to drop us off at a total scam operation. But what really made the experience bad was a Hotel activity manager *** response. He tried to brush us off, argued with us saying herbal medicines dont work on everyone and how do we know its fake products, but you could see on his face he already knew it was all a scam, and couldnt even pretend to hide it when he smelt the chemical cream himself. His story constantly changed and all we wanted was our money back, and to voice our disappointment in the hotel that we trust to look after us during our stay instead dropping guests off at a scam operator, and that they should not continue this in the future. ***did not acknowledge any of our points or agree we had been scammed and story constantly changed back and forward between he has never had a complaint and everyone loves this spice garden, to then saying he has taken other people back to get refunds and they will not stop taking guests there. He kept repeating that it is a semi government place, however that doesnt change the fact that we had hust bought a bag full of fake and chemical products. He was unprofessional, rude, laughed at us before we insisted he come back with us to get our money back. After a very unpleasant experience we spent the night at the hotel, just to wake up in the morning at 7:15am to message and screenshots on whatsapp from***showing some guest reviews that enjoyed the spice garden and saying "u know reviews dont lie". This is incredibly petty and unprofessional, we were trying to enjoy the stay and forget about the unpleasantness of the day before, why he thought it was appropriate to message me again in the morning to drag it all up again to try and prove some point. Hotel activities manager messaging guests early in the morning with messages to imply we are the liars since the few other random reviews "dont lie" is shocking.