It’s got ‘boutique’ in its DNA
Veteran hotelier, Chandra Mohotti, once challenged me to explain what is a boutique hotel. I suggested: “a small, exclusive hotel with unusual décor, featuring well-designed rooms, exceptional food with intelligent, personalised service, set in a secluded location, run to guests’ whims rather than management’s regime.” I avoided adding “with snobbish intent,” although that is apparent in some boutique hotels in Sri Lanka.
There are nearly 200 boutique style properties listed in Druvi Gunasekara’s excellent guide “Boutiques in Sri Lanka, 2014” (available free on line at www.boutiquesinsrilanka.com). Martin G. Straus, the MD of the British Food & Beverage Training Centre in Colombo, estimates there are nearly 500 properties in Sri Lanka claiming to be “boutique.”
Lantern: Combining exclusivity with the relaxed atmosphere of a beach hotel
It seems owners of guesthouses and small, independent hotels, consider they only have to call their properties “boutique” to attract foreign guests with cash in search of cachet. The outcome is not always a happy one as many properties, while they have obligatory furnishings and fittings from Paradise Road, are unable to live up to guests’ expectations with smooth, butler-style service.
I have often told potential visitors to Sri Lanka they will have a more enjoyable time with better attention if they stay in an ordinary, family run guesthouse at a modest rate, rather than paying over the odds to stay in a self-proclaimed “boutique” property.
So it makes me happy to report that I have found an unusual hotel that has boutique in its DNA, without being extravagant in its ambience. The Lantern on the beach at Kamburugamuwa beside the A2 highway between Mirissa and Matara, is unusual because it combines exclusivity (only four rooms and two suites) with the relaxed atmosphere of a beach hotel.
Its architecture is post-tsunami, which means it is built on pillars with one side open to the beach and the opposite side open to the road, so that were the waves to roar inland again, they would flow right through the hotel. The guest rooms are upstairs, entered from a landing on the road side, with broad balconies overlooking the beach.
What’s cooking? An open kitchen where guests can watch their meal being prepared
The design of the rooms is refreshingly spacious and high roofed but with a small cubicle with rain shower and toilet, accessed from a large bathroom with louvered shutters that can be opened up to reveal the entire bedroom. There is no ceiling, just the underside of the asbestos roof; even the bathroom shares the same ceiling as the bedroom.
Touches of boutique eccentricity are evident. For instance, there are no cupboards or drawers, only spaces for hanging clothes and broad shelves for piling everything up within sight. There is a flat screen TV but no work desk nor chair, although there is a recliner and two huge square, cushioned loungers on the balcony.
The light switches are easy to operate and the power points are placed sensibly. There is AC, with a ceiling fan in the room and one on the balcony. The safe is locked with a key not a code, and soap is liquid in a dispenser, not a nasty tiny bar wrapped in paper. Tea, coffee and milk are in airtight jars, not paper sachets, and there is a glass beaker with a plunger (a “French Press”) for making coffee.
Typical of new boutique properties is that the bathroom walls (apart from mosaic in the shower) and room floors are brushed grey, titanium-style cement. It’s practical and anyway the rooms, facing the beach, are bright with daylight. The bed is comfortable, with an ottoman at the foot of the bed containing extra pillows.
There is no room telephone and I was pleased to note the absence of that destroyer of camaraderie, the mini-bar. Guests can enjoy the company of like-minded souls in the long open-sided lounge, restaurant and bar, where the bar counter is fashioned from an old medicine cabinet.
Most unusual for a hotel, is its completely open kitchen. Guests can watch every moment of their meal being prepared by chefs whose expertise has been acquired through years working in five-star hotels. The highlight is to enjoy vegetables or herbs grown in the hotel’s own organic garden in a three-acre plot at the other side of the main road.
Guests can browse the garden with the manager, R. Lenore, to choose what they want; I was even able to pick my own spinach for lunch. The menu is not complicated with a few appetisers and main courses as well as an irresistible pavlova with meringue made in house, smothered in ice cream, fruit and butterscotch.
Everything listed on the menu is available, unlike some boutique properties that solicit a guest’s order in the morning so staff can dash down to the nearest supermarket to buy the meat or fish for the evening. Although it is a boutique hotel, Lantern is also open to non-residents who come from far and wide to enjoy the food.
There is a plan to expand the Lantern concept to provide a total of 31 rooms in adjoining locations. If it retains its formula of bright accommodation, attentive service, uncluttered décor and superb food and wine, Lantern will be a boutique hotel outshining more formidable properties.
Lantern, Kamburugamuwa Beach, Mirissa; www.thelanterngroup.co; rates from US$200, double, b& b.