With the Sultanate opening its borders to visitors after positive signs of recovery from COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism industry is set to see more people arriving in the country in the coming months. According to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information, Oman received 7,000 visitors during October this year. Visitors from GCC countries topped the list with 5,500 people arriving in the same month.
“With the opening of the borders and issuance of tourist visas, Oman will have more in-bound travellers in addition to indigenous visitors to many tourist spots in the country,” said an official with the travel and tourism industry.
Since the breakout of the pandemic in March, like any other country in the world, Oman too was hit with its airports and seaports closed to visitors from abroad.
“Opening of markets for tourists and business visitors is a welcome move after such a long freeze in businesses. But the new initiative will move the cog in the wheel of economy slowly but steadily,” said Sunil D’Souza, CEO, TravelPoint.
The new move allows tourists beyond to plan a trip to Oman and apply for a tourist visa to enter the country, provided they have a hotel booking or sponsorship from a local travel agency.
Travellers are also required to present two negative COVID-19 PCR tests to become eligible to get entry into Oman — one with not more than 90 hours prior to departure and another at the airport on arrival.
For trips less than seven days, visitors will also be able to bypass the quarantine requirement and freely explore their destination.
However, D’Souza said that a few key points including the number of mandatory PCR tests and quarantine measures “need to be re-considered and reduced”.
According to the November bulletin from NCSI, the number of visitors fell by 97.4 per cent by October compared to the corresponding period last year.
The total revenue of Omani hotels in the three-to-five-star category fell by 60.2 per cent to RO 70.70 million until the end of October 2020 compared to RO177.72 million for the same period of the previous year.
In addition, hotel occupancy rates fell by 50.1 per cent to reach 26.1 per cent until the end of October 2020 against 52.3 per cent for the same period of 2019, according to statistics shared by NCSI. Meanwhile, the total number of guests in hotels fell by 53.9 per cent in the first 10 months of 2020, reaching 646,841 guests from 1.40 million guests for the same period of 2019.
Among the nationalities, Omanis constituted the maximum number of visitors, reaching 337,687. This was followed by 164,873 Europeans and 47,643 Asians until the end of October 2020, the data released by NCSI revealed.
There was an overall drop in the number of guests of all nationalities until the end of October 2020, with American guests and GCC guests increasing by 67.8 per cent and 79.5 per cent to reach 17,919 and 34,349 guests, respectively.
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