I am starting to look into Xmas travel options, including Sri Lanka. Tea Trails looks great, but at 650 Euro, a bit out of budget. Also this rate is all inclusive - all meals, alcohol etc. I avoid all inclusives since frankly, we don't eat and drink that much and I'd rather pay for what I eat. Can anyone recommend a hotel with a similiar ambiance/setting/level of service?

We looked at the Tea Trails for our upcoming trip (Feb 2013), and decided to stay at cheaper places with similar history. One that I am looking at booking is the Heritance Tea Factory (http://www.heritancehotels.com/teafactory/). I think there are a few places around Ella and Bandarawela which may not be as grand as the Tea Trails hotels but offer similar ambiance.

No place will have the service, food, amenities of Tea Trails. But as albert points out, there are lots of places that are in tea country and will give you a nice experience there.

You might take a look at Boutique Sri Lanka's website, as they have lots of hotels listed with lots of information about each place. As I remember, all of the places we looked at in Tea Country were all-inclusive.

If you don't want all-inclusives you probably need to stay in Nuwara Eliya or Ella, but you won't get the ambiance or service of Tea Trails (based on what I read - it's WAY out of my budget). I ate lunch at Heritage, it seemed nice, but again, I would say the ambiance at Tea Trails would be better.

i might have to rethink our dates then....this is why I never travel at Christmas! Tea trails does look lovely but I can't swallow paying that much in Sri Lanka. Thanks for the boutique Sri Lanka website tip. There are some other places that look nice as well.

Yes, as you know, Xmas travel is expensive. I don't know what Tea Trails regular prices are now, but I expect they are significantly less than that.

We rarely use agents to book our trips, but we did use BSL to book our trip to Sri Lanka. They were excellent.