Shangri-La Colombo

The land at 1 Galle Face was the headquarters of the Sri Lanka Army until the government sold it in 2011, and the seafront beside Galle Face Green had never carried a tower before. Shangri-La Colombo opened there on 17 November 2017: 541 rooms over the Indian Ocean, seven restaurants and bars, the largest ballroom in the country, and beneath it the One Galle Face mall and offices, which followed in 2019.

History

Shangri-La paid about US$125 million for the ten-acre site in 2011, part of the post-war building boom along the Colombo waterfront, and opened its Hambantota resort on the south coast a year before the city hotel. On Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019, a suicide bomber attacked Table One, the hotel's main restaurant, during breakfast, one of the coordinated bombings across the country that morning; guests and staff were among the dead. The hotel closed and reopened in June 2019, with Table One rebuilt. The One Galle Face mall opened that November and the complex has operated as a single block since.

Architecture and design

The hotel tower, in glass and pale stone, stands on a podium shared with the mall and further towers of apartments and offices, the tallest group of buildings on the Colombo seafront. Guest rooms face either the ocean and Galle Face Green or the city and Beira Lake. The Sapphyr Lounge in the lobby opens towards the sea, and the interiors follow the group's usual pale timber and silk with local references in the art.

Rooms and suites

The 541 rooms and suites run up the tower with floor-to-ceiling windows; the ocean-facing rooms watch the sun go down behind the breakwater every evening. Horizon Club rooms on the upper floors share a lounge with breakfast, afternoon tea and evening drinks, the brand's executive tier.

Dining

Table One is the all-day restaurant, built as a market with open kitchens for Sri Lankan, Chinese, Indian and Western cooking. Shang Palace is the Cantonese room the group opens in every city. Kaema Sutra, created with the chef Dharshan Munidasa and the actress Jacqueline Fernandez, serves Sri Lankan food in a contemporary register and is the restaurant visitors ask about. Capital Bar and Grill does steaks and whisky; Sapphyr Lounge, in the lobby, does afternoon tea and the evening crowd. Two further venues complete the seven.

Wellness

CHI, The Spa occupies a floor of treatment suites, with a health club and gym beside it. The outdoor pool sits on the podium terrace facing the ocean.

Weddings and events

The Grand Ballroom is the largest in Sri Lanka and was built for the Colombo wedding, which runs to many hundreds of guests. Smaller ballrooms and meeting rooms on the same floor take conferences, and the hotel is the usual venue for the city's larger corporate events. Wedding receptions on the pool terrace, with the sea behind, are the alternative to the ballroom.

Location

The hotel stands at the southern end of Galle Face Green, the seafront lawn where Colombo walks in the evening, between the Old Parliament and the Fort district to the north and Kollupitiya to the south. The Galle Face Hotel of 1864 is a neighbour on the Green. Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayake is about 35 kilometres north, 45 minutes to an hour by the expressway; Colombo Fort railway station is two kilometres away. For a luxury hotel in Colombo with the sea on one side and the business district on the other, it has no equal in size.