Revenues up, occupancy down for hotels in Oman

Muscat: The total revenues of Omani hotels in the three-to-five-star category rose by eight percent to RO155.235 million till the end of September 2019 compared to RO143.693 million for the same period of the previous year.

However, hotel occupancy rates fell by 7.4 percent to reach 51.4 percent at the end of September 2019 against 55.5% for the same period of 2018, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

Meanwhile, the total number of guests in Omani hotels showed a significant increase by 18.7 percent in the nine-month period of 2019, reaching 1,252,163 from 1,055,118 guests for the same period of 2018.

Among the nationalities, Europeans constituted the maximum number of visitors, reaching 398,013.  This was followed by 387,914 Omani guests and 158,371 Asian tourists until the end of September 2019, according to the data released by NCSI revealed.

There was a rise in the number of American guests, GCC and Oceanian guests and other Arab guests by 30.8 percent, 0.3 percent, 11.2 percent and 18 percent to reach 49,467; 153,811; 11,873; and 54,689 guests, respectively.

However, there was a drop in the number of African guests by 2.5 percent to reach 8,825 guests.

Omani hotels received 1.49 million guests and the hotels generated total revenues of RO214.1 million in 2018.