Hoteliers in Diani and Kwale blame poor infrastrucutural development to low hotel bookings

The tourism sector players in Diani and Kwale County have attributed poor infrastructure development as a factor contributing to the low number of hotel booking by tourists in the region.

Diani Reef Beach Resort Chief Executive Officer Titus Kangangi over the weekend said the national and county government should speed up the process of building of the Likoni channel bridge which he termed as one of the key solution to reducing traffic and delays at the ferry.

The CEO said that building a bridge will be a permanent solution as it will connect and open up the region to a lot of businesses and create employment opportunities to the youths in the region.

He said buying of new ferries and construction of bypasses is only a temporal solution that should be relied to boost the other means of transport because it is faced with a lot of delays.

"The challenge tourism sector grapples with in Diani and Kwale is accessibility due to poor infrastructure.  Unless a bridge is built the on Likoni Channel to ease the traffic, buying of new ferries and constructing bypasses will be temporary. Building a bridge will revive business and create employment opportunities across the County," said Kangangi.

The CEO said the government should fast track the upgrading and expansion of Ukunda Airstrip to allow landing of bigger aircrafts.

Kangangi said that the airstrip that handles two flights per day should be upgraded to an airport in order to allow more flights coming through from various destinations in the world.

"We need to expand Ukunda Airstrip and upgrade it to an airport and introduce more flights because we have only two flights per day yet there were 435,568 arrivals at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport JKIA and 47,402 arrivals through Mombasa International Airport MIA in the period starting January to July this year which is a slight increase from the same period last year with JKIA receiving 425,701 tourists and MIA registering 40,485 respectively," said Kangangi.

The CEO said that there is need to speed up the construction of the Dongo Kundu bypass and tarmac the Samburu-Shimba Hills bypass to allow smooth flow of tourists using the routes.

He said that the County governments should endeavour to install fresh water machines in hotels because borehole water was salty and corrosive and investors incur a lot of cost to maintain the machines.

Kingangi said that the ministry of tourism should utilise the sh.1.5 billion budget allocated to it in the financial year to market the tourism industry both locally and internationally.

He said that Europe was still leading in the number of tourists visiting the country with a 164, 550 arrivals since January to July this year.

Africa and Indian Ocean countries follow with 133,187 arrivals this year since January to July, Asia comes third with 82,084, and America produced 72,099 tourists, followed by Middle East registering 22,040 and lastly Oceania with 9,010 arrivals.

According to the database records by Diani Reef Beach Resort, there were 1800 cruise ship arrivals between the period of January and July 2016.

The CEO said that the number of holiday makers stands at 73 per cent of the total arrivals while business and conference contributes 14 per cent and 13 per cent is contributed by those who are on study, religious, medical trips among others.

He expressed optimism about the December booking especially the Conferencing and weddings that had seen significant bookings by foreign visits since October and November.

He said the December bookings by the local tourists was picking up slowly because Kenyans like the last minute rush.

Kangangi said that they are looking forward to tapping into cultural tourism with the availability of Kaya Forest that can be organised and packaged to add value to the general product.

He said that beach wedding, Agri-tourism and annual beach sporting activities are part of the opportunities they are looking to tap into in order to create more opportunities and employment.
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