Tea Trails wins global award

Ceylon Tea Trails, the world’s first tea bungalow resort connected by walking trails in Bogawantalawa Tea Estates, Hatton has been selected for the TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Award (2009) in the categories of Best All Inclusive Hotel (World) and Best Hidden Gems (Asia).

Ceylon Tea Trails

TripAdvisor is the world’s largest Travel community on the web, with more than 32 million visitors every month, nine million members and 20 million reviews and opinions generated monthly by actual travellers who cover more than 300,000 hotels in 30,000 destinations worldwide.

TripAdvisor is an operating company of Expedia Inc. of USA, the world’s largest Internet based travel company.

A typical rave review of Tea Trails at tripadvisor.com said, “If you stay in one place when in Sri Lanka, make sure this is it!” Along with Tea Trails, only 10 hotels made it to the Best All Inclusive Hotels in the World category. Only one other hotel in Asia made it to the list.

Vice President of global communications for TripAdvisor, Michele Perry said, “Millions of real travellers worldwide have helped identify these outstanding hotels, recognized for their exceptional accommodation, service and value.”

A co-founder and Group CEO/Managing Director of Forbes and Walker Thilan Wijesinghe said it is a remarkable achievement for a Sri Lankan hotel to make it to the list of best hotels in the world, voted for by actual travellers.

He also said that the hotel charges are the highest in the hill country and the average spending of a client per day is around US $ 400.

This is as against the average daily spending of a tourist, which is around 80 US dollars.

The significance in this award is that unlike any other worldwide hotel awards program, actual travellers and guests at these hotels base the “Choice Awards” on an analysis of real and unbiassed reviews and opinions about the hotel.

Hence this is a unique achievement for a Sri Lankan hotel.

“Tea Trails must now rank as the resort that has received the most accolades of any in Sri Lanka by the International press.”

He also said that they maintained a high occupancy last year despite several negative factors. Most visitors to Tea Trails are from the UK.

The guests ranged from celebrities, writers, nobility, diplomats, direct descendents of British planters and discerning Sri Lankans.

The shareholders/Directors of Tea Trails (Pvt) Ltd are Merrill Fernando (Chairman), Malik Fernando (alternate), Nick Clayton, Thilan Wijesinghe and Dinesh Ambani.