And it wasn’t just Modigell, “The other day I rallied a group of volunteers and after cleaning up just two kilometres of beach, we ended up with seven tonnes of plastic,” Marini testified.
A problem Joho said the Mombasa county government was working to resolve, “What we’ve done is we’ve provided trucks in which people can dump their garbage instead of disposing it by the side of the road which has been the problem. We had heaps of garbage everywhere.”
But where the beach fronts are concerned, Kandie urged the property owners to take a more proactive role.
“Look at the Billionaire Club in Malindi, white beaches. I don’t see why the other property owners can’t work with KWS who already have a programme cleaning up 12 kilometres of beach,” she challenged.
On her part, Kandie again promised to set up a unit under her Ministry to standardise the ratings of hotels.
“We plan on setting up the Tourism Regulatory Authority within the next few weeks. This has been long overdue, we need to regulate the sector, we need to bring in standards into the hotels so visitors to Kenya get what they pay for,” she said.
A move Marini agreed was long overdue, “We actually meet the US requirements for a five star resort including flame retardant mattresses. But a lot of the facilities along the coast claim to be five star while they’re not or they were and are now run down and they end up giving the rest of us a bad reputation.”
The product itself, the stakeholders agreed, needs revamping.
“KTB needs to change its strategy. We now need to do more than just harp about beach and safari. It’s tired. Let’s give our cultural heritage some airtime. This whole all-inclusive business where the guests never have to leave the hotel because you even take the Maasai dancers to them gives them a raw deal,” Galgalo Abdi, the curator of Fort Jesus, argued.
“That’s why we don’t offer full-board at Leopard. We want you to go out and experience Diani. Diani is not the hotel. That way we create employment outside the hotels. But the government also needs to do its part and ensure the area is safe; something as simple as sidewalks and street lighting could go a long way in bolstering the night life,” Modigell concurred.
And while the private sector and the government may disagree on a few things, they both agree that urgent action needs to be taken to restore the Kenyan coast to its former glory with Modigell, Marini and Ndegwa forming part of the tourism recovery committee.
