Monday 18 / November / 2024
Muscat: The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism has adopted a policy designed to promote the local content in the heritage and tourism sectors.
The policy aims at achieving the goals of sustainability and local content in the heritage and tourism sectors through a set of programmes and initiatives focusing on the continuity of growth in the heritage and tourism sectors and maintaining sustainability of the elements of tourism attraction, as well as maximising the economic value to enhance the local content.
Ruqaya Said Al Habsi, Director of Quality and Sustainability Department at the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, said that the tourism development plan includes many programmes pertaining to quality, sustainability, competitiveness and the local content in line with goals of Oman Vision 2040.
She added that the application of local content contributes to the development of economic sectors, including the heritage and tourism sector, the promotion and sustainability of local development through the Omanisation of jobs, increasing local purchases and services and developing local companies to raise economic development in the sector, as well as developing the converting sector by increasing local manufacturing opportunities, enhancing the purchasing power of the national product and raising the efficiency of national cadres, in addition to creating job opportunities for citizens and investing in assets.
She explained that the concept of sustainability has evolved from being limited to the environment and maintaining the continuity of life depending on natural resources to cover the concept of sustainability for humans, which is defined as a set of operations carried out by people in order to ensure the continuity of generations through the development of means of growth and exploitation of resources.
She further said that sustainable tourism is defined in the tourism sector, according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO) as tourism that considers its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, and meets the needs of visitors, industry, the environment and host communities. She pointed out that the local content means the total expenditure that contributes to strengthening the national economy. It is used to develop local companies and national human resources.
