Muscat: The National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) has released the number of visitors to the Sultanate, hotel guests and other related figures
until February 2020, a month before the COVID-19 measures came into effect, including travel restrictions.
The total number of visitors coming to the Sultanate until the end of February was 690,000 contributing RO 44 million to the economy.
The majority of these visitors were GCC nationals, followed by Indian, German and British nationals. The total number of guests in three to five-star hotels was 311,000.
The total number of guests in Oman’s three to five-star hotels was 163,000 in February 2020, a decrease of 0.4 percent from the previous year.
The revenues for these hotels were RO 23.2 million in February 2020, compared to 24.1 million in 2019, a decrease of 3.7 percent.
It may be noted that from January 11 until February 20, the country was in official 40-day mourning for late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos.
The total occupancy rates in hotels were 69.2 percent in February 2020, a decline of 5.5 percent from the same period a year ago.
The country also saw 53,000 cruise ship visitors during the month of February 2020, with the majority of travellers being the Europeans (46,662) followed by Americans at 4,168.
Around 513,000 outbound travellers (a decline of 8.9 percent) departed from the Sultanate during February 2020, with Omanis constituting 64.6 of them.
The number of inbound visitors declined by 3.9 percent, to 339,000
during the same period.
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