Despite the efforts made by the concerned official authorities and private sector institutions to advance the tourism sector in the country, we need to develop more plans and strategies to empower this sector and benefit from it to provide employment for job-seeking youth.
This sector is vital for everyone, whether the government or the private sector, and through it, thousands of job opportunities can be provided for citizens and jobseekers, as we see in many foreign countries. For those wishing to open their own tourism establishments, procedures and approval processes should be simplified.
We must work to enable them to manage their individual institutions, whether from homes, cafes, or any other place, because many of the required tourism services can be provided through small sectors that the tourists require after arriving at their final stations.
In general, many Arab countries have not benefited from the tourism sector as is the case of foreign countries, and have not reached the levels as required according to reports issued by international tourism institutions in this regard.
For example, the Travel and Tourism Development Report, which has been issued every two years by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland since 2007, indicates that Arab countries do not rank first globally in tourism by measuring a set of factors and policies that contribute to a sustainable and flexible environment for the travel and tourism sector.
There are many criteria that are evaluated to determine the indicators that occur in this sector, including the enabling environment, policies and enabling conditions for tourism and travel, infrastructure in the field of tourism, enhancers of demand for tourism and travel, as well as the sustainability of tourism and travel.
What is new in this regard is the positive expectations that could happen in the global tourism sector during the current year 2024, as the recovery cycle in global tourism has now fully begun from the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the number of tourists is expected to increase during the current year.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, international tourism reached 88% of pre-pandemic levels, while the number of international travelers was estimated at about 1.3 billion travelers in 2023. Thus, the tourism sector’s contribution to the global economy during the same year reached $3.3 trillion.
The Sultanate of Oman is not far from these developments, as great efforts are being made to develop tourism facilities and provide the necessary services to attract more tourists from different countries of the world. Local statistics indicate that the number of foreign tourists totaled around 3.5 million in 2023, compared to 2.8 million tourists in 2022. Tourism revenues also recorded an increase to reach $1.2 billion in 2023 as a result of the increase in the number of tourists to the country.
Oman, represented by the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, is working to upgrade this sector by attracting more required investments in infrastructure, and has developed a comprehensive plan to attract more tourists and visitors to the country, targeting 11 million tourists and visitors annually by 2040, while working to establish more tourism projects in order to provide more job opportunities for Omanis in various of these projects.
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