Muscat: Oman’s capital of Muscat has been ranked sixth among 69 capital cities around the world that people would like to visit for a vacation.
The survey, put together by US luggage storage company Bounce, ranks capitals across a number of categories: average hotel costs, public transport costs, average temperature, rainfall, number of attractions, restaurants, crime rate, and even the number of Instagram hashtags.
Muscat finished sixth, behind other Gulf capitals Abu Dhabi (second), Manama (fourth), and Riyadh (fifth). Valletta, the capital of the island nation of Malta, was in first place, with India’s capital of New Delhi finishing third.
Muscat’s reputation for safety meant it scored very low in terms of crime rate (14.32). With a score of zero, Vaduz, the capital of the tiny state of Liechtenstein, was designated the safest capital on the list, while the least safe was Pretoria in South Africa (88.36/100).
“Of the 197 countries in the world, we decided to focus on just ‘developed’ nations,” said Bounce, in their report. “To determine if a nation is developed it had to fit into one of the following categories: OECD member states, any nation with a Human Development Index score of 0.8 or more, and any country in the top 50 largest economies.
“This left us with 81 countries, however as we could not find complete data for some this was whittled down to 69,” added the organisation. “We then looked at data for the capital cities of each of these countries.”
According the report, the average cost of a hotel in Muscat is $210.66 (around OMR 81), while the mean cost of a one-way journey on public transport is $1.32 (roughly 500 baisas). Ankara in Turkey has the cheapest hotels at $45.74 (OMR 17.5), while Luxembourg recently made all public transport free, which means tourists who visit the country do not have to pay to use the bus.