TOURISM promoters at the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) are setting out to build the Burigi-Chato Park Hotel billed to have a floating bar backed with a transparent floor for tourists to watch marine life swirling around the bedecked bar.

Said Nkumba, the Chato district commissioner, said in an interview here yesterday that the district expects the hotel to be ready for the 2024 Christmas and 2025 New-Year holiday season.

Project organisers and technicians spent some time at the site yesterday, where they provided the overall design of the hotel and its vital floating bar component with the ringing intention to open shop on the shore within late December.

The building itself is already taking shape as a horizontal single storey structure facing the lake shore on its rear view, intended to boost tourism at the Burigi-Chato National Park and other spots in the zone.

The DC said that President Samia Suluhu Hassan has injected funds to ensure the project is completed on time, pointing out that this year alone the project was credited with 480m/- on top of an earlier sum of 700m/-.

The project was initiated in 2020 and then stalled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, being built at the Rubambagwe shoreline in the district and town, as a three-star hotel project tendered to the Lake Zone unit of the National Service Corporation (Suma-JKT) as main contractor, working with Agreneb Consult Ltd of Dar-es-salaam as service engineers.

The Ardhi University’s Building Economics Department also based in Dar es Salaam are consultant architects and quantity surveyors, while KEA Co. (T) Ltd, as a multipronged technology firm as part of a worldwide brand, has the role of structural and civil engineering for the client, the TANAPA conservation commissioner.

Abdul Kabeza, the Suma JKT supervising engineer for the Lake Zone, explained that the 11bn/- hotel project will have 20 executive suites and 10 ordinary rooms each with a private balcony overlooking the lake, with plans to add a separate wing for state dignitary suites.

The hotel will be the first in Tanzania and East Africa to feature a floating bar, a residential supermarket, special settings for water sports, two large swimming pools, volleyball and basketball fields, a tennis court and rooms for indoor games like gymnastics, he stated.

Four conference halls are similarly on the drawing board, ready to host extensive meetings and various public functions, he said.

Dr Imani Kikoti, the TANAPA assistant conservation commissioner, said that the hotel is expected to have a catalytic role in the recently hatched tourism strategic plan for the Lake Zone circuit.

Other tourist spots in the zone include the Rubondo Island National Park, the Ibanda Kyerwa and Rumanyika Karagwe parks in Kagera Regional while the tourist hotel is in Geita Region.

The tourism circuit is networked with the Akagera National Park in Rwanda and tourism sites on the Ugandan side of the border, he said.

Rubondo Island National Park which he heads attracts more than 3500 tourists annually at present, he added.