Forbes
Flavio Briatore is known for his love of the finer things in life and a jet set lifestyle in the world’s most desirable places. One of those, the billionaire Italian businessman says, is Malindi, in Kenya.
It is a slice of Indian Ocean coastline that “makes you feel protected, like you are in the stomach of your mother, he says. So much so, that Briatore has invested in a luxury complex of apartments and hotel rooms with an attached casino—the aptly named “Billionaire Resort”.
“In the day you can admire Africa, in the night you have everything you have in Monte Carlo or in Pisa,” he says.
Briatore has been traveling to Kenya for 20 years, and says that it is a perfect complement to Europe. Flight times are around six or seven hours, the time difference is an hour at most, so visitors barely experience jet lag. Kenya’s long rainy season typically falls in the middle of the European summer, the rest of the year the Indian Ocean coast rarely drops below 25 celsius.
“You never really sweat. This is paradise,” Briatore says.
The development is 80 percent sold, and to what Briatore calls “very high people. They have houses in St Tropez, houses in Sardinia and houses in Miami.”
As with much of Kenya, it is a place of startling beauty. The country sits across some of the world’s prime tourist real estate, from the desert lakes around the cradle of civilization in the north, through lush mountain forests, the volcanic Rift Valley and the wide, open plains of the Maasai Mara. However, the country has relatively few facilities for the kind of global elite tourists who own and rent similar coastal properties in Europe and the Americas. But investment into the sector appears to be picking up. Sir Richard Branson, the British billionaire, opened a new resort in the Mara in October—although Virgin Airways, his airline, closed up its Kenyan business a month later on sagging demand.
It is not necessarily a bad bet. Europe’s elite has been far better insulated from the economic crisis than its average tourist punters.
Kenya has a well-functioning tourism industry in some important areas, but is often let down by its infrastructure. Its major airport hub, Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International, is creaking and was seriously damaged by a fire in August. Road networks are crumbling, although there has been some investment around the capital, and power supplies can be intermittent at best.
“About 50 percent of our clients are arriving in Malindi with private jets,” mitigating the existing problems with infrastructure, Briatore says. “But the government has for the moment done nothing to improve the infrastructure with the place. But we are pushing… to clean up the place,” Briatore says.
“But the government has changed as well. We have a young generation of politicians. Uhuru Kenyatta and [William] Ruto. These young people know about tourism, because Uhuru had his education in London. It’s moving a lot. In the last three to four months a lot has changed. People are trying to fight corruption and try to make Kenya in the focus of tourism.”
More concerning, though, is security. Kenya has been relatively stable for decades, but some simmering social tensions boiled over in the aftermath of the country’s 2007 elections. Hundreds were killed, thousands displaced as the violence spiraled. That violence still overshadows the country: the young new president that Briatore references, along with his deputy, are both facing charges at the International Criminal Court for inciting that violence.
Then, in September of this year, international terrorism returned to Nairobi. The Somali terror group Al Shabaab struck the Westgate Mall in the capital, killing 72. The government’s response was a mixture of heavy-handedness and confusion, and left many wondering if the authorities really had a handle on security. It looked poisonous for the tourism sector, which had been rebounding despite the headwinds of Europe’s ongoing economic downturn. Other incidents, including mob violence in Malindi earlier this year, have also damaged the country’s reputation.
The cabinet secretary to the National Treasury, Henry Rotich, said in an interview last month that, despite the attack on Westgate, the government expected the gradual tourist recovery to continue. This was, he said, an international problem, which had struck cities around the world.
Briatore concurs, and acknowledges that reassuring guests that they are safe is paramount to establishing Kenya as a hub for the global luxury class. His resorts have made security a priority, he says, and the company has worked hard to establish its reputation in the area to head off any local discontent. The construction on the coast employed 500 people.-
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