Financial Times in UK highlights Uga Escapes’ growing influence

The UK’s Financial Times recently identified leading Sri Lankan leisure group Uga Escapes as a formidable home grown player which, by rapidly adding to its portfolio of luxury boutique properties, is looking to challenge the host of foreign hotel chains that have traditionally dominated the industry.

The world’s premier business daily newspaper made these observations in an article which also reviews Uga Escapes’ newest hotel, Chena Huts in Yala, and its first, Ulagalla in Anuradhapura. 

UgaBay-Beach-Midday

“Recent years have seen the luxury hotel market in Asia and beyond increasingly dominated by fast-growing international chains (the likes of Aman, Banyan Tree, Six Senses and so on). So it is intriguing to find in Sri Lanka a home grown player aspiring to rival those groups in the highest league of the hospitality industry,” the Financial Times states.

The newspaper also spoke to Uga Escapes Managing Director Priyanjith Weerasooria, who commented on the group’s origins as a subsidiary of the Finco Group. He revealed that Ulagalla was opened in Anuradhapura in 2010, in the immediate aftermath of the war, because “this was a part of the country that needed investment and jobs, and we’ve always been a company that built businesses from the ground up.” 

The Financial Times also briefly outlined the future aspirations of Uga Escapes, opining that “despite having opened five hotels in as many years, expansion is very much ongoing and, within two years, Weerasooria hopes Uga will be able to offer what he calls a ‘round­trip’ of the island.”

Private pool at Ulagalla Villas

“Next up is likely to be a hotel ‘up in the hills in the tea country’, inland from Colombo and within sight of the sacred mountain known as Adam’s Peak, site of the Sri Pada or sacred footprint, where Buddha is said to have trodden. And in the far south of the island, a historic landmark ripe for conversion within the Galle Fort is also under consideration. There are whisperings, too, of grander ambitions – not just competing against the international chains at home, but expanding overseas. Certainly if he and his team can continue to create hotels as pleasing as these two, I shall hope to visit all of them.”

The hotels operated by Uga Escapes are Ulagalla in Anuradhapura, Uga Bay in Passikudah, which was recently selected by reputed travel website TripAdvisor as Sri Lanka’s top hotel, Jungle Beach in Kuchchaveli, positioned in the top 10 of the same TripAdvisor list, Residence in Colombo and Chena Huts in Yala, which opened in December 2015. For more information on all these properties, visit www.ugaescapes.com.

Chena Huts- Master Bedroom