Muscat, June 10 - Oman is expected to receive 65,129 tourists from China, Russia and Iran in 2018, thanks to the progress made in the visa facilitation process, says an official report. “The initiative aims to ease visa applications process for the emerging tourist markets such as China, Iran and Russia. It focuses on activating an e-visa system and thereby increase the number of users of e-visa system. This move will help improve Oman’s rank in the Openness Index,” said the annual report of the Implementation Support and Follow-up Unit (ISFU).
One of the main objectives of this initiative is to create new tourist visa facilitation for tourists from markets such as China, Russia and Iran.
In 2017, the initiative’s target was to attract 43,419 tourists from China, Russia and Iran through the new visa facilitation.
The initiative working group, with the help of ISFU, has provided great support to achieve the target. In April 2017, during the Second Tourism Forum, the Royal Oman Police (ROP), in coordination with the Ministry of Tourism, announced new visa facilitation for China, Russia and Iran nationals.
As per the new rule, travel agencies and above three-star hotels in Oman can obtain a licence directly from the ROP to bring tourists with sponsored visas. At the same forum, the ROP announced the e-visa system.
The initiative working group conducted a survey among stakeholders to evaluate awareness of the new visa facilitation. They saw encouraging results as a majority of the stakeholders were aware of the new visa facilitation. The working group, with the attendance of ROP officials, held meetings with tour and travel agencies to find solutions to issues faced in the tourism markets.
As of October 2017, 10,000 users had used the e-visa facility. The working group also communicated with the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) to obtain updated statistics on the number of tourists from the new markets (China, Russia and Iran) using the new facilitations. As of September 2017, the number of visitors from these markets had reached 39,472.
Vinod Nair
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