Hotel description

With upscale Sri Lankan tourism booming, we’ve seen openings in a couple of the genres that matter: most notably the uniquely Sri Lankan plantation-house hotels and Dutch-fort hotels, as well as outposts of the global Amanresorts mini-genre. Urban high-design boutique hotels, though, have been largely absent — at least up to now, with the advent of the Casa Colombo.

This one, though comprising just twelve suites in a 200-year-old Moorish mansion, is underneath it all a bona fide city boutique. The twelve suites are more bachelor pad than resort hotel, complete with six channels of piped-in music, and the bar and restaurants (one fusion AND one tapas, if you can believe it) serve the guests but pack in the locals as well.

Key to the Casa Colombo’s appeal is its small size. Twelve suites means intimacy, privacy, service by name, and makes redundant the traditional reservations desk — Casa guests are received at Colombo airport by their own Domo (a sort of concierge/butler/chauffeur) and whisked straight to their rooms, champagne in hand. And it doesn’t end there, if you don’t want it to — your Domo is fully qualified to show you the town via motor rickshaw.