Eating and Sleeping

Food

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Drink

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Accommodation

Where Best to Stay
Sri Lanka has a wide variety of places to stay depending on your mood, budget, location or preference. Many different styles of accommodation are on offer from family-run guesthouses to exclusive walauwas (mansions), including boutique and niche hotels, former government rest houses and planters' clubs, sumptuous suites and villas, colonial-era residences and hotels, and traditional cabanas. And it is possible to rest your head in all or a selection of these establishments on a two-week tour of Sri Lanka.

Tikalanka Tours has visited and selected a range of quality accommodation with ambience, service and friendliness in mind. All of these places have been checked recently and personally by Tikalanka Tours to ensure your enjoyment during your stay in Sri Lanka. In many areas of the island you will find a wide choice of accommodation of differing styles, such as in Kandy and at the southwestern beaches. In other parts of the country a more restricted range of accommodation is offered, either because of its isolated locality (e.g. Sinharaja) or due to the limited number of good places available (e.g. Tissamaharama).

Taxes
A government Goods and Service Tax (GST) of 16%, which is added to meals, is applicable to accommodation in the tourism sector for foreign visitors. In addition, a service charge of 10% is also levied on room rates by hotels/guesthouses. Obviously, both of these taxes will be incorporated in the price of any holiday organised by Tikalanka Tours.

Regional and Seasonal Variations
Prices are inflated by hotels/guesthouses in Kandy during the Esala Perahera festival in July/August and in Nuwara Eliya during the April holiday season. 'Long weekends' (weekends when a public holiday or Poya [Full Moon] day falls on a Thursday, Friday, Monday or Tuesday) also attract a substantial increase in room rates in Nuwara Eliya. In addition, many hotels charge a supplement to the normal room and meal rates over Christmas and New Year. All of these price differences are reflected in the cost of holidays offered by Tikalanka Tours.