LUXURIOUS mountain cabins, equipped with all amenities to guarantee visitor comforts are now under construction at the Mandara and Kibo stations on the route to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Angela Nyaki, the Kilimanjaro National Park (KINAPA) CEO, said at a briefing here yesterday that the planned cabins are in addition to existing facilities at the Horombo gate.

As more notable personalities show interest in climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, strategists at the Tanzania National Parks opted to build luxury cabins near the roof of Africa to accommodate VIP guests, he said.

The assistant conservation commissioner said at the Marangu gate Kilipark head offices that celebrities were increasingly attracted to try to conquer the world’s highest free-standing mountain, thus the management is working to ensure that accommodation facilities at the place are top notch.

The ‘Royal Tour’ had generated impressions in the region and well beyond, such that hiking at the Kilimanjaro shifts from a gruelling experience she stated, affirming that TANAPA wants to make sure that people who want to climb Kili for relaxation will also be catered for.

“We in consultations with the Tanzania Electric Supply Co. (TANESCO) to find proper ways of networking power lines up the mountain without disturbing its pristine environment,” she stated.

The KINAPA management is seeking to pump water up the mountain via environment friendly systems, with portions of post-pandemic tourism recovery funds, as upwards of 800m/- was allocated at the time to upgrade the infrastructures on the mountain, passageways in particular she stated.

From July 2024 to last month more than 55,000 people climbed the mountain, also listed as a world heritage site, where all these activities generated over 92bn/- in eight-months, whereas during the pre-pandemic period an average of 49,000 climbers tried the hike per year.

Nearly 60,000 trekkers were attracted to the mountain in the first half of the financial year, with the majority of climbers hailing from the United States where ‘the Royal Tour’ was extensively shown, with the park management projecting anything up to 100,000 visitors by the end of June, she specified.

After a pandemic slump, the documentary featuring the president helped galvanise the travel industry, she said, while Kim Vertleyden from Switzerland - who had just finished the climb -said it was his long-term dream to scale Africa’s highest peak after watching a documentary about it from a Belgian television station when he was a child.

Benedict Mato, his guide during the expedition, said that the ‘Royal Tour’ documentary sowed similar seeds among young people who have an opportunity to watch it, for them to trace the Belgian’s visitor’s footprints.

Kim intends to return to Kilimanjaro next October this time bringing along his friend who was doubting that he could make it, the visitor intoned.