KK Beach

Recently spent 4 days at KK Beach on a return trip to Sri Lanka (having stayed at its sister hotel Kahandakanda in March) . The property is slap bang on a beautiful beach straight out of a tropical magazine image . The rooms are beautifully furnished in blue and white with exceptionally comfortable beds . Lots of nice touches - blue striped kimonos and flip flops to wear down to the pool (which was cleaned daily) and mini bottles of mosquito repellent . The staff are all exceptional - very friendly and eager to please. Special mention to Mudali, Patham, Kasun, Sahan, Thisaru, Supun and of course Chef whose meals were a highlight of our stay. Apologies if I’ve missed any of the boys as you were all so nice to us.

This lovely small hotel is a wonderful place to relax at the end of your holiday. We were in the penthouse suite which was very big and very comfortable with a large balcony overlooking the sea. The pool is fantastic and of a good length to properly swim in it. The staff are attentive and obliging. The food is reasonable but not exceptional. it's about 30 mins to Galle. The only thing you MUST be aware of is that the sea is not really swimmable in. We were there in mid to late January and only saw a handful of people swimming further up the coast. Certainly outside the hotel you would not want to risk it as it has fierce under-tows and the waves can be big and aggressive.

The 1st thing I feel obliged to say is we didn’t feel this was a 5* resort, compared to, say Kumu Beach where we have stayed previously - I daresay there’s a price differential! The other poignant thing to mention is, given it rained at some point everyday of our stay, the basic rooms don’t seem to have a balcony and, the ocean suites that we stayed in have an uncovered balcony, which rendered it useless in the rain. The weather was not the hotel’s fault of course, but during our 5 night stay the hotel wasn’t at full capacity until our last night, and the suites appeared to be unoccupied - it would have been nice if the manager had used his initiative & offered those rooms to make the other guests stay more enjoyable. We also wondered why the hotel wasn’t full in high season… On the positive side, we did enjoy our stay here - the pool is nice, with plentiful sun beds & Kasun is an absolute asset to KK, making sure the guests are as comfortable as possible. He also accompanied me on the beach & showed me where to swim in relatively safe conditions, given the waves & fierce undertow. The beach is beautiful but the sand in front of the steps down has been swept away by the storms - we actually saw the difference in the 5 days, where the drop down onto the beach became less deep. The food here is top class - they’ve clearly got an excellent chef. The restaurant is nice but, given the lack of guests didn’t have much atmosphere & our 1st night we were in there on our own! We realised other guests were eating elsewhere - there is certainly other options within easy distance, either on the main road, or Galle. Incidentally, I must mention that KK is on an extremely busy road but once inside, you don’t hear the traffic at all - mainly because the ocean drowns it out. The other big asset here is the staff, especially Kasuntha, Prasad & Sahan - a real credit to the hotel.