The Bentota Beach Hotel was one of the first hotels designed by Geoffrey Bawa in the late 1960s after the then government took a keen interest in promoting Sri Lanka as a tourist destination.
"I think Mr. Bawa was asked to design Bentota, one of the most important tourism places in Sri Lanka, Bawa protégé, Channa Daswatte said.
"With that he constructed two tourist specific hotels in Sri Lanka, and in doing so he invented the Sri Lankan tourism style," he said.
"Until then we had rest houses and grand old colonial hotels but there were no specific Sri Lankan hotels for tourism"
Bawa gave rise to the architectural style that is now called 'tropical modernism', which is inspiring a generation of contemporary architects across Asia, in designing not only hotels but also publi