Objective 2 above addressed MMNR visitor
activities, and ways of enhancing and diversifying these activities
in order to strengthen the MMNR tourism product and reduce the
impacts of visitor activities on the MMNR environment. Objective 3
now turns to the other crucial dimension of the MMNR tourism
product – the visitor accommodation provided in the MMNR.
Like visitor activities, the quantity and quality of MMNR
accommodation facilities are crucial both in terms of the overall
tourism product on offer as well as the impacts of tourism on the
MMNR environment. And also like visitor activities, these impacts
have significantly increased in recent years, as the number of
tourism accommodation facilities in the MMNR has grown, and
individual facilities have gradually expanded both in bed numbers
as well as in the visitor amenities provided.
To address this situation, Objective 3 introduces
a range of initiatives designed to improve the management of
Reserve accommodation facilities. This includes: a major overhaul
of the current management of the Reserve’s special campsites,
including doing away with the existing exclusive use arrangements
and the introduction of a new centralised booking system; the
development of new premium accommodation facilities in the
MMNR’s Low Use Zone in accordance with the Zonation &
Visitor Use Scheme, and based on a new transparent and equitable
tendering procedure (based on KWS tendering procedures); and the
review and standardisation of all MMNR leases, as is currently
being undertaken in KWS national parks, designed to bring all MMNR
leases in line with the prescriptions of this management plan and
to enable optimal revenue generation for Reserve management and the
two county councils.
From an ecological perspective, it will also be
important that initiatives are taken to ensure that all MMNR
accommodation facilities adhere to appropriate environmental
management standards to minimise their impacts on the MMNR
environment. Most notably, this applies to waste and sewage
disposal practices, which if not properly carried out can have
serious impacts on the area’s environment and wildlife.
Ensuring that accommodation facilities are operating to best
international environmental standards is also an important aspect
of improving the MMNR tourism product, especially as visitors
become more and more environmentally aware and begin to demand that
the accommodation they occupy in wildlife sanctuaries like the MMNR
is environmentally benign.
One challenge for MMNR management with regard
tourism accommodation relates to the budget tourism facilities that
have rapidly developed on the borders of the Reserve in recent
years, the so-called “mushrooming camps”. These
camps are generally cheaply constructed, have not been subject to
appropriate environmental impact assessments, and offer poor
standards of service and visitor care. As a result, they generally
reflect badly on the Masai Mara as a visitor destination, and on
the Kenyan tourism product as a whole.
Nevertheless, as explained in the Zonation &
Visitor Use Scheme, these camps account for around 60 percent of
the visitors to the MMNR, especially to the adjacent High Use Zone.
Influencing the quantity and quality of tourism accommodation
offered by these mushrooming camps can potentially have very
important implications for the MMNR tourism product and the
environmental impacts of tourism in the Reserve. However, these
facilities are all established on private land outside the Reserve,
and the ability of MMNR management to influence how these
facilities are run and where they are developed is negligible. For
this reason, this programme chiefly focuses on accommodation
facilities within the MMNR. The issue of the mushrooming camps is
mainly delegated to planning initiatives now getting underway in
the Greater Mara Ecosystem, although it is in part dealt with
through the new MMNR pricing schedules introduced in the Pricing
& Revenues chapter, as well as by the initiatives to support
conservation-compatible tourism
