The architecture of the modern Asian Hotel is now taken for granted. But this was not always the case. The earliest hotels built for organized tourism was mostly built in the tropical modern style related to the international style then prevalent in architecture.

Tourism, the world's largest industry has played a major role in the economies of south and South-East Asia now for well over 40 years. Although the notion of travel to exotic locations is not a new thing – Thomas Cook took his first travel groups to Egypt in the late 19th C – its transformation of the Asian landscape is relatively recent. Organized tourism as we see to today came to Sri Lanka for instance in the 1960's when the then government saw the potential it offered for creating employment in an economy that was hitherto dependent on the export of tea, rubber and coconut. With changes in the world markets for these items, new avenues of industry were explored and a ministry of tourism and a tourist Board was set up for its promotion.

Until the 1960's the only places that people could stay if they travelled around Sri Lanka were the government circuit houses also know as ‘rest houses’ a legacy of the Dutch and British Colonial government. Situated in Prime locations these rest houses provided simple fare in terms of food, a clean bed and bathrooms for the few people who traveled for pleasure in that time. In addition to these, there were the Grand Colonial hotels and clubs in the main centers such as Colombo where the Galle Face Hotel (Fig. 1) opened its doors in 1865 and the Grand Oriental a little later, the Queen's Hotel in Kandy, The Grand in Nuwara Eliya, the New Oriental Hotel in Galle and the Grand Hotel in Anuradhapura – so few they can all be named.