Before the starting of the high season all the accommodations will be probed and tested, the rooms and small structures sold on Air BnB on Booking.com and on other online platforms, to ensure acceptable performance with national laws on hotelkeeping, licenses and other. This was decided by the Ministry of Tourism, through its monitoring body Regulator Tourism Authority and announced the national director Kipkorir Lagat Saturday afternoon in Malindi.
"That rents and hospitality online even structures that are no hotels is a new phenomenon that has taken hold in Kenya - said the Minister of Tourism Balala, outskirts of malindino meeting last Saturday - and we also collected the complaints of the associations of hoteliers who feel threatened by this phenomenon and simply ask that this form of accommodation is regularized, with taxes and licenses. "
Balala has reassured the small entrepreneurs of the sector, also local. "It will be a control of the Ministry of Tourism, nothing aggressive - he explained - we just want to make a mapping, on the other hand it is easy to make a list, simply enter the various sites and get in touch with the facilities, check if everything is fine and then eventually give them time to come into compliance time ".
Between Malindi and Watamu by a rough calculation would be more than two hundred rooms "unofficial" sold on online accommodation platforms.