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Please do not demolish us, Weston Hotel pleads


The UK-based Weston Hotel has pleaded not to be demolished, disassociating itself from the scandal-ridden Kenyan hotel after a barrage of negative tweets from Kenya.

The tweets called for Weston Hotel in Nairobi to be brought down but tagged the one in the UK, which is not on a disputed piece of land.

The UK hotel last tweeted, “Just to reiterate a point we made a few months ago, this is not the Weston Hotel in Nairobi. Please do not demolish us.”

And in January this year when the Langata Road Primary School land grabbing incident was being discussed, the hotel made a series of clarifications on the matter and even tagged the Nairobi Weston Hotel directing people discussing the issue.

“Before this gets out of hand can we make it clear that this account is NOT associated with the Weston hotel of Nairobi #Scarborough,” said the hotel in one of the tweets.

In an email conversation with Nairobi News, Tom Hendry of the Weston Hotel UK said his hotel was in no way affiliated with the Weston Hotel in Nairobi.

NATIONAL SCANDAL

“We are a small, independent, family run hotel in Scarborough with no formal ties to any other hotel in the UK let alone internationally. It just seems rather unfortuitous that we have exactly the same name as the hotel embroiled in your current national scandal,” he said.

Mr Hendry said the the scandal has had very little affect on their business in the UK, in part, due to the lack of coverage the story has received in the UK.

He said their Twitter page has been unusually active over the last three to four days: 436 retweets and 98 favourites. The UK hotel uses Twitter handle @WestonHotel while the Kenyan one uses @Weston_Hotel.

Nairobi’s Weston Hotel is at the centre of a dispute following claims that it stands on a piece of land that was allegedly grabbed from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority.

Last week, Deputy President William Ruto, appearing on a talk show at Citizen TV, owned up to having shares in the hotel.

He, however, refuted claims that the hotel had grabbed the playground of Langata Road Primary School, a dispute that led to police officers teargasing pupils earlier in the year.