The Galle Face Hotel in Colombo has won Gold in the Best Heritage Hotel category at the South Asian Travel Awards, and placed sixth in the Rest of Asia category at the Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards 2026, NewsFirst reported on Friday.

It is the first time the hotel has taken the region’s highest recognition in the heritage hotel category at the South Asian Travel Awards, according to the report.

The Condé Nast placing was decided by votes cast by travellers, the awards being a readers’ poll rather than a judged industry prize.

The awards were given in Malé, not Colombo

The South Asian Travel Awards is a regional programme, and this year it was held in the Maldives — a detail worth stating plainly, because the awards have previously been staged in Sri Lanka.

This desk covered the opening of the same event on 7 October. It is the 10th edition of SATA, held at the Nasandhura Palace Hotel in Malé, drawing industry representatives from Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan, with panel discussions running before the awards ceremony scheduled for Thursday.

That places the Galle Face Hotel’s Gold at the 8 October gala, the day before NewsFirst’s report, although the report does not itself date the presentation.

The hotel

Open since 1864 and in its 161st year, the Galle Face Hotel stands on Galle Road overlooking the Indian Ocean at the southern end of Galle Face Green. It is among the oldest hotels east of Suez and one of the more recognisable historic properties in Asia.

NewsFirst quotes hotel officials crediting the result to staff across front office, housekeeping, culinary, engineering, food and beverage, security and support departments. The hotel trades on the line “Heritage with Heart” and is known locally as the Grand Old Dame of Colombo.

Not reported

NewsFirst does not say who accepted the award, on what date it was presented, or which other properties were placed in the heritage category.

It gives no previous placings for the hotel in the Condé Nast Rest of Asia category, so the sixth-place ranking in this report cannot be read as either a rise or a fall. The report describes it as a strong performance; no comparative figure is offered to support or contradict that, and this desk has not been able to verify the hotel’s earlier placings against a primary source. The category’s full 2026 ordering is not given, nor the number of properties ranked.

The Best Heritage Hotel award at SATA is a regional prize and is distinct from the domestic heritage categories at the Sri Lanka Tourism Awards, which the hotel has won in earlier years. Searches for this story returned chiefly those older and unrelated awards.

At the time of writing no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had filed on the hotel’s SATA win, and this report rests on the single NewsFirst account.

Sources: Sri Lanka’s iconic Galle Face Hotel wins double international honour — NewsFirst, 9 October.