Had a great new year at this hotel the staff were very helpful and polite . The food was good especially for the new year gala which was excellent . Lovely sea view room which was kept clean and tidy . Had no trouble with beach boys or anybody any where in sri lanka found it a very chilled out country

Spent Christmas 2011 here with my girlfriend, brothers and parents (who had just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary and we're renewing their vows in Sri Lanka - the main reason for the trip).

In general, the rooms are clean, the pool is lovely and the beach is literally a stones throw away and the clean sand does not disappoint (although the sea is a touch choppy!). The choice of food is excellent with Sri Lankan curries to western dishes for the less adventurous.

The hotel excels in keeping pool dwellers entertained by hiring an "animator" (named Lanka) to organise activities through the day (a bit of water polo in the pool, volleyball on the sand etc.) and manages to do so without disturbing people wanting to purely relax - I'm qualified to say this as our party fell into both camps!

The vow renewal ceremony was celebrated in the manner of a traditional Sri Lankan wedding and was nothing short of fantastic - the elephant behaved impeccably!

If I had to mark the hotel down for something then it would be the attentiveness of the staff in the restaurant - ordering drinks then waiting longer than expected for example. But these niggles for very much few and far between.

An excellent hotel in a beautiful location.

Positives - the people are lovely, most of the staff very helpful and attentive (particularly our room cleaner), the atmosphere is very relaxing and the buffet has plenty of variety. We were there for Christmas and they made a HUGE effort to put on lots of lovely different food options, to set and decorate the tables all around the pool area, put on fireworks, cocktails on the beach (for an additional charge) and visit from Father Christmas.
Negatives - the biggest negative is the quality of the food (particularly the pool bar - which is dreadful) for the all inclusive option. There is a two tier system here and if you are on all inclusive you would normally think you had paid plenty for this so called pampering privilege, but in fact you were treated as a second class customer. This is most obvious in the pool bar where awful (virtually inedible) food is brought out for those wearing the wrist bands denoting the All inclusive option, cheek by jowel with lovely fresh pizzas, lobster, gorgeous green salads - if you were paying as you went along.
The beach is okay - not that clean but not dreadful - coarsish sand, very very high waves (the children couldn't swim, it was too dangerous) but we had great fun in the waves.
The pool is not that big, I thought there must be another one having stayed in plenty of flash resorts where there are virtual waterways all around the hotel, I guess my standards must be quite high. But anyway there isn't (bar a kiddy one).
The sunbeds start getting booked up (in the sun) from about 8.00 am or earlier so you need to make sure you bag one. The signs say that you cannot do this, but the pool man happily goes along with it right from early in the morning before anyone heads off to breakfast with their towels and belongings marking out their chairs.
The rooms are not big. We had a big argument when we arrived as we paid for 4 of us to be all inclusive in a family room, only to be told there was no such thing but they could squash a camp bed in to the (already cramped) room or we could sleep with one of our daughters in with us. Given they are 8 and 12 and this was a holiday partly to celebrate our tenth anniversary we were not happy with this and made our complaints known. There was nothing to be done as there are apparently no bigger rooms, but after lots of complaints the minute we arrived (which got a bit nasty when the manager told us we were not 'special' to him), we insisted he contacted the tour operator and they offered us a small refund. This didn't buy the time back for us though and did leave a bit of a sour taste, especially given the price still did not reflect 4 people squashing into a room only designed for 2-3 people.
We did a trip with a tuk tuk that reception called for us (quite random - they have no vetting over who turns up) but this was very enjoyable. We visited a Natural Herb & Spice Garden and found it very informative but the 'doctor' there tried to get us to part with nearly £200 worth of products, having told us it would not amount to much, and pressurized us to give his volunteer assistants big donations given they split between 23 of them. He tried everything he could including herbal tea, massage, to soften us up and all kinds of tricks and then hit us with a big bill for products he was putting in a bag for us. We mostly turned them down bar a couple. Lots of pressure and attempted horse trading followed. This is a shame, there was no need for him to act like this as we would have bought some things from him but not when put under sly tactics like this.
Next time I think I would go north of Columbo. The ride from the airport along the Galle Road is very very slow (tortuously so) - it took us over 3 hours to cover the 40 miles or so after a 10-hour flight which felt long because the entertainments didn't work.
This makes it sound an awful holiday - it wasn't, all of us really relaxed and enjoyed it but it is not the pampering luxury option it is billed as. We've been lucky enough to stay in Four Seasons, Ritz, Shangri La and Kempinski Palace - so maybe our standards are too high. Having said that I thought I was realistic enough to understand this hotel was not in that league but given the price we paid I did expect better quality.

Our stay at Avani; previously known as Kani Lanka; was amazing. We booked this place as our first part of our honeymoon and we are really glad that we did!

The hotel has everything you need for a relaxing break. The rooms are spacious and cleaned several times a day if needed.

The food is great too all day long with great variety and choice.they have different food everyday for breakfast and dinner (we went half board) and even lunch was very reasonable at the pool. 

It seems that the hotel has been taken over by new management, as previous negative posts on trip advisor cannot be further from the truth. The staff here work very hard to create a comfortable and enjoyable atmosphere. 

The best thing of all was the hospitality of the staff. They were lovely and nothing was too much bother for them. They made our honeymoon feel very special. Specific thanks to Dulip in the canteen, Viraj at the bar and Andrew who looks after the restaurant. These guys were fantastic and arranged everything for us even without us asking.

The hotel was beautifully decorated for Christmas and Christmas eve events were lovely. 

We also met a 'beach boy' named Nilantha. We were hesitant at first to book any excursions with him however he made us feel at ease straight away and we had a great trip to the turtle hatchery. You'll find that he will show you the real Sri Lanka at a very reasonable price (£60 cheaper than our agent recommended tour guide).

We would not hesitate to visit again and highly recommend the hotel