Wednesday Dec 25, 2024
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The Blackpool Resort & Spa Nuwara Eliya celebrated its seventh anniversary recently with the appointment of the new Leader of the House (General Manager) Chaminda Amarasinghe.
The hotel which was built on a former potato cultivation is owned by a consortium including a Japanese investor, Yatra Travels, former Director General of BMICH Bandula Ekanayake and three book publishers Sarasavi, Samayawardhana and Sadeepa.
The hotel has 54 rooms with seven suites built on different themes and each has cold water, heaters, tea coffee making facility, cable TV and free Wi-Fi. The hotel also has a large banquet hall to accommodate 225 guests and a conference facility to cater to 100 guests with modern facilities. The hotel has a multi cuisine restaurant, ‘Altitude 1818’ that could accommodate 120 guests and the ‘Single Tree Lounge and Bar’ and ‘Taylor’s Tea Lounge’.
“In a bid to create exclusivity, we also introduced the first heated outdoor swimming pool in Nuwara Eliya, a much sought-after attraction. As the hotel adopts sustainable energy practices, the swimming pool too is powered by solar energy. This concept also won us several global and local sustainable awards including the German Sustainable Energy Conservation Award, which placed us seventh out of 100 projects in the world. The hotel also won the Presidential Environment Awards in 2018 and has also achieved the ISO 14001:2015 as well,” Bandula Ekanayake stated.
The Blackpool Resort & Spa has also received the World Luxury Hotel Awards and Luxury Mountain Hotel (Asia – Continent Winner). Blackpool Hotel has a new management theme where the General Manager is designated as Leader of the House, Room Boy as Team Members and Chefs as Leaders of Culinary Expertise. Bandula Ekanayake, a veteran in the industry said that Nuwara Eliya is still considered a one-night destination though there are so many things that could be marketed to make it a three-day destination. “This includes a site to the Hakgala botanical garden, world’s end, golf, horse riding, tea fields, tea factories and water falls as well as the Ravana trail,” he added.