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Top 50 Eco Lodges Award

Ranweli Holiday Village was recently awarded the prestigious 'Top 50 Eco Lodges 2009' award by the editors of the well known National Geographic Adventure Magazine. Ranweli is the only Sri Lankan hotel to be featured - a significant achievement for Sri Lanka's premier eco lodge.

Top Island Lodges | The Most Earth-Friendly Retreats in the World’s Most Spectacular Wilds

Dinner Theatre at Ranweli Holiday Village

A Dinner Theatre featuring acclaimed satirist /comedian Wilson Gunaratne was held at Ranweli Holiday Village on the 1st of May 2009

Our Guests Dine Under the Mangroves by the River

Dining under the mangroves in a secluded forested environment is a special experience for all nature lovers. Several of our guests from Germany dined recently at our fine dining restaurant in the heavenly atmosphere. The venue is a shelter made of jungle timber and the dry leaves of the palmyra tree. The furniture is rough, hewn from tree trunks and the branches of fallen trees. Our restaurant stands tall on stilts, as the river slips by beneath.


At night, lanterns provide a soft glow of light against the backdrop of the starry night sky as romantic and peaceful a place as any on earth.

Visit of the World’s Leading Eco Lodge Architect – ARQ. Hitesh Mehta

Hitesh Mehta, the world leading ecolodge architect visited Ranweli Holiday Village to research material for his book 'Leading Ecolodges of the World'. Ranweli Holiday Village will be among 35 around the world and the only one from Sri Lanka to be included in this publication by Harper Collins.

The picture shows left to right Messrs. Chandra de Silva former CEO, Hitesh Mehta and R. S. Wijewardene- Chairman. Mr. Mehta is a landscape architect, environmental planner and worked at Edward D. Stone Jr. and Associates, Florida which is one of the leading Ecotourism planning and landscape architectural firms in the world.

Mr. Mehta has been consulted on the design of several eco lodges in Eastern Africa including the famous Lobolo Lodge on the western shores of Lake Turkana. Other consultancies inter alia include eco lodges in Guyana, West Indies, Panama, Egypt, Kerala and Florida. He has also worked with the European Union on the diversification of tourism in Kenya and with USAID on the development of eco lodge guidelines for the Red sea.

Mr. Mehta is a Senior Director of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) Washington D.C, and adjunct Professor at Florida International University. He is also one of the leading professionals in the field of planning and designing of eco lodges, has written several research papers on the subject and speaks regularly at conferences around the world. His web site on eco lodges is www.eco-mon.com the only one of its kind on the Internet.

CEO of Ranweli Holiday Village Makes a Presentation to Students at the University of Applied Sciences, Berlin

Our former CEO Mr. Chandra De Silva was invited by the University of Applied Sciences, Eberswalde in Berlin to deliver a presentation for post graduate students in Sustainable Tourism Management. The participants included students from London Metropolitan University. The presentation was based on a case study on Ranweli Holiday Village as an Ecotourism facility and implementation of sustainable tourism principles.


The photograph shows Mr. Chandra De Silva along with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Strasdas and a section of the students.

Hector Cabellos-Lascurain, Ecotourism Consultant Visits Ranweli

Mr. Hector Ceballos-Lascurain is an architect, environmentalist and Ecotourism/cultural tourism expert based in Mexico. He was the first to coin the term 'Ecotourism' back in 1983. He is a special advisor on Ecotourism to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and World Tourism Organization (WTO). In 2004 he was awarded the Colibri Lifetime Achievement Ecotourism Award, granted by planeta.com and Canyon Travel.

His comments on Ranweli Holiday Village :
"As an international Ecotourism consultant and environmental architect, I have been extremely impressed with the Ranweli Resort. Your orientation to Ecotourism activities including bird watching, is very commendable. I loved the boardwalk, the river, birding tour with the excellent guide and the general environmentally-friendly approach . Keep up the good work!"

** ASIAN KOEL Eudynamys scolopacea, S.Koha
43cm. Red irides. Male - shining black-blue plumage Female - brown, profusely spotted and barred with white.BrR. All Zones.Very Common