The newly opened Rainbow Resort along the Nairobi-Thika super highway.
Website: http://rainbowruiruresort.com/#!/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RainbowRuiruResort
Publisher: www.businessdailyafrica ©All Rights Reserved.
Photo/Salaton Njau ©All Rights Reserved.
By SIMON CIURI
Posted
Thursday, March 21
2013 at
21:25
In 1982, Julius Kamau, then a college student, dreamt of
standing on top of his own beautiful hotel with water fountains and
flowers sipping coffee. For the young man from a poor family, the
prospects of realising that dream then appeared remote.
‘‘I then laughed at myself... I was as broke as a desert rat,” Mr Kamau says.
Thirty one years later, his daughter Pauline Kamau
sits at the Rainbow Ruiru Resort’s reception attending to a client— a
hotel that her father has built.
Mr Kamau started the journey to fulfil his
childhood dream in 1998 while living in East London. While shopping for
vegetables in the foreign land he recalled the dream. He took the first
step.
“In January 1998, I asked a Nigerian friend to put
this dream into a real picture. He did it and I hanged the picture on
the wall. Every morning, I would look at it and say, ‘thank you Lord for
giving me a wonderful five-star hotel,’’ he says.
In May the same year, he took the next step. He
mortgaged his house and asked his brother to look for one acre piece of
land in Ruiru. His brother got him a piece of land but he was
disappointed as the land was an abandoned quarry that Ruiru Town Council
had earmarked as a dumping site. Little did he know that it is at this
quarry where his dream was to be turned into reality.
Today, he has the Rainbow Ruiru Resort in Kiambu
County to show for his hardwork, managing to set up an investment in a
remote area; a resort many of his friends thought was a waste of money
and time because of its location.
It is the serenity and the ambience that draws
visitors to the over Sh2 billion resort. Its interior design resembles a
royal yacht. The hotel that took Mr Kamau 15 years to build has a
helipad, 130 rooms, 12 fully furnished apartments with Internet, a pent
house, a cocktail bar, jacuzzi, gym and a business centre.
It has a 300 bed capacity. Accommodation charges
range from Sh4,400 to Sh9,900 per night. At the hotel’s 11 floor which
houses the helipad, one can see Kilima Mbogo at a distance and the
illusion of the mountain moves closer as one watches it from the
rooftop.
Constructing the resort was not an easy task. Mr
Kamau who runs a security firm, Rainbow Guarding in the UK says the
Ruiru investment was funded by savings.
Rainbow Guarding was founded in 1994 and offers
security solutions to Berkley Homes, Laing Partnership Housing,
Salvation Army and London Property Plc among other companies in UK.
‘‘The owner believes his entire life could not be
confined in London,’’ said Mathias Mukundi, the general manager of
Rainbow Ruiru Resort.
Ms Kamau has been taking care of her father’s
investment; a project she says is a well calculated decision of how
Kenyans are sending some of their earnings back home instead of
investing all their money in a foreign country.
Mr Kamau came from a humble background and the
desire to rise from poverty inspired him to seek a different life. Now
59, he can stand among Kenya’s millionaires, but according to his
workers, a humble millionaire.
‘‘The founder is one of those people who despite
having immense wealth, he does not use his position to gain prominence,
he does not believe in fame but on humane values that can give birth to
development-oriented ideas,’’ said Mr Mukundi.
Mr Kamau who still lives in the UK connects tourists visiting
Kenya to his hotel. The hotel management also works with local tourism
agents to market Rainbow Ruiru Resort. The team is working on ways to
make own bookings directly in coming years.
‘‘We want to create a clear contact where tourists
visiting Kenya will be flown from the Kenyan airport by our own
choppers direct to our hotel, landing at our modern helipad,’’ said Mr
Mukundi.
Mr Kamau has entrusted Mr Mukundi who has been in
the hospitality industry for 25 years, having worked with major hotel
chains in Kenya among them the Sarova Hotels to run his hotel.
Though not a hotelier, Mr Kamau has built the
hotel to take advantage of an increasing number of tourists and business
travellers coming to Kenya and local visitors seeking adventure in
places out of town.
‘‘For years there has never been a hotel in Kiambu
County that could accommodate large number of clients and offer
services that we are offering now,’’ Mr Mukundi says.
‘‘We are optimistic that this investment will
successfully run for decades, we are ready to add values that blend with
my father’s aspirations when he was setting up this hotel,’’ said Ms
Kamau, who also acts as the hotel’s deputy manager.
East African Breweries
is one of their main clients and Mr Mukundi is optimistic that with the
new devolved system of government, Rainbow Ruiru Resort’s conference
facilities will lure more visitors.
‘‘Thika Superhighway has come as a blessing, with
the hotel being a few meters from the main road, the demand for decent
yet affordable accommodation is inevitable. We are doing well compared
to previous years when Thika road was rough,’’ he said.
Mr Mukundi said there Kenyans in the diaspora
should be encouraged to invest back home. He said it is worrying that
only a small number of Kenyans are remitting their earnings and
investing here.
sciuri@ke.nationmedia.com
