Isle of Agnes to be built in the South

The Isle of Agnes to be built in the southern coastal part of Sri Lanka in the middle of the sea with nothing between it and the South Pole promises to be the next level of hotel in the country's tourism development. Prices will range from US$ 1000 TO 10,000 per night for a suite only.

The concept comes from Prasanna W. Jayewardene who conceptualised and developed the one of a kind "Elephant Corridor" hotel on land he owned in the middle of the jungle by a lake surrounded by hills and mountains with the iconic Sigiriya rock fortress as the focal point.

Almost five years after the trail-blazing opening of this hotel which led the way to many firsts, including electric cars, plunge pools in every suite, no fences, naturescaping, no buffets or meal times, the Isle of Agnes will be also world class, but unique among the unique in the world of future tourism.

Prasanna said that the first hotels he saw only from the outside were the Queens and Suisse hotels in Kandy while schooling at Trinity College and growing up in the hill capital. He subsequently managed these hotels as well as the other two colonial classics Mount Lavinia and Galle Face Hotels, at different times of his forty-year career.

Having also managed hotels and hotel groups in Malaysia and the Seychelles quite apart from those in Sri Lanka his schooling at the tourism institute in Klesshiem Castle in Salzburg Austria led him to training in Switzerland, France, Pakistan and the UK.

From the first hotel he managed in Sri Lanka the Browns Beach Hotel in Negombo in the early 1970s to the Isle of Agnes has been a very long road.

From a sun and sand hotel catering to mass tourists arriving by European charter planes requiring buffets and menus written daily in German and French and entertainment programs to night clubs, the movement to luxury stretched limousines and no menus, coupled with underwater cameras and room doors opened by handprint has been a huge progression.