future looks bleak

Kiriba ti's touriam future looks bleak

By any of the standard measures Kiribati’s tourism future is pretty hopeless.

Air Nauru provides an infrequent ser vice which leaves travellers with few options. Worse, the airline is hard to book on the main booking services and Americans are discouraged from using it.

Air Marshall Islands flies an irregular

service from

Majuro while

Aloha Airlines flies a weekly charter from Honolulu to Kiritimati Atoll.

It cannot be booked on; show and get your ticket is the rule.

One of the

problems is

Bonriki Airport

on Tarawa is completely insecure, its run way lights are routinely vandalised and ter minal facilities are less than basic. And the hotels and motels on Tarawa are infamous for noise, little water and bad food.

All that said Raion Bataroma is pretty hopeful that tourism is going to make a dif ference in his life.

The former Commerce Minister has built two guesthouses on Abatao islet which has the advantage of being detached from the rest of south Tarawa whose islets are connected by causeways and bridges.

Bataroma’s little operation As2s a night plus Ass a meal (“sorry, its fresh fish again,” says his nurse wife) is complete ly locally based. The two houses are built of pandanus and bamboo and the family

produces all the food there.

Transport across to the road over the lagoon depends on the tide; at low tide its a short wet walk, at high tide a local boatman takes everybody across at 30 cents a head.

Most of Bataroma’s business comes from officials at the government’s Fisheries Department, or by word of mouth.

He’s talking of someday getting himself an Internet listing but there is no telephone

at what he calls his “homestay by the sea”.

“People who

come here like it very much and we like having them because they become our ' friends,” he said.

“It is a new busi ness for me but one I like.

People tell me to build another guesthouse but I am being careful about it.”

However it does have rich fishing and diving grounds and long treks up the barely inhabited islands of north Tarawa.

The beauty of Abatao however is in its peace and sweet scenery, offering an ideal escape for people needing a rest, or with a project to be completed undisturbed.

The comfort too for the politically con scious traveller is the knowledge that every cent spent there is plainly going into local hands not to a multinational chain of some kind. And when Bataroma’s five year old grandson happens by a voluable, happy conversation can be had he is quite undeterred by the failure of the guests to speak any i-Kiribati. ■

Small seale guest houses such as these on Abatao island in Tarawa offer locaks a chance to get Into the tourism industry.