Nuwara Eliya Hotels

Glendower Hotel, Nuwara Eliya: Hotel to avoid

The most awful hotel experience I've ever had in 12 years of visiting Sri Lanka. I stayed one night at the Glendower Hotel in February 2008 with my husband, our 3 month-old baby and my parents and managed about 1 hour's sleep the whole night. We were given small, dark rooms although the room rate was fairly high and assumed this was because the hotel was full, only to find the next day that the hotel had been almost empty.
The rooms stank of mothballs so that the smell caught in our throats. In one of the two small rooms we found around 25 mothballs scattered about.
The handles came off the furniture in our hands. The crockery wasn't very clean when we ordered tea.
At about midnight a water tank on the roof above our room started to overflow down the roof. The sound was deafening. We could find no-one at reception, so we called and shouted and no-one came. So we phoned reception from our room hoping someone would hear, but nobody did.
Then the water started dripping through the roof and pouring into our room; onto the wardrobe and splashing onto us and our bags. There was water everywhere. Then the rats in the roof space started running, presumably to keep out of the water, and kept running and squeeling for a few hours.
At dawn my husband finally found someone in reception and made them turn the water to the tank off so I and the baby could get a few hours sleep.
We were given the worst breakfast we had in a month in Sri Lanka.
Then the acting manager at the desk did not apologise, and would not deduct anything from the room price. He wouldn't even come and look at the room to see how wet it was. Finally he agreed to call the actual manager on his mobile and I spoke to him myself. The actual manager asked to speak to the duty manager and the room boy, and then chose to believe the room boy (who told him there wasn't any water in the room) over me (eyes half shut with a tiny baby having been up all night trying to keep the baby dry). The manager didn't bother to apologise, and refused to deduct more than 20% from the room rate.
It was the worst customer service experience I have ever had anywhere, including Sri Lanka.
Don't stay at the Gelndower Hotel!!

Unique Quality: Uniquely terrible customer service