Revenues of Omani hotels rise 8.7%

Business Monday 15/October/2018 16:27 PM
By: Times News Service
Revenues of Omani hotels rise 8.7%

Muscat: The total revenue of Omani hotels in the three-to-five-star category rose by 8.7 per cent to OMR131.96 million in the first eight months of 2018 from OMR121.45 million for the same January-August period of last year.
Hotel occupancy rates also increased by 3.4 per cent to 56.5 per cent during the January-August period of 2018 against 54.6 per cent for the same period of 2017, showed the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
However, the total number of guests in Omani hotels in the January-August period of 2018 declined by 5.3 per cent to 942,514 from 995,541 in the same period of 2017.
Among various nationalities, Europeans constituted the maximum number of visitors at 317,444 but fell by 13.6 per cent compared to the same eight-month period of 2017. This was followed by Omani guests, which stood at 260,160. However, the number of Omani hotel guests declined by 5.8 per cent when compared to the same period of last year.
Likewise, tourists from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries fell by 5.5 per cent to 136,869 guests in the first eight months of 2018, from 144,766 for the same period of last year.
A phenomenal growth was witnessed in the case of African, Asian and Oceania visitors, which went up by 33 per cent, 13.7 per cent and 19.6 per cent to 8,685, 118,462 and 9,713 guests, respectively, during the eight-month period, showed the provisional data released by NCSI.
American visitors rose by 3.4 per cent to 34,185 tourists, while guests from other Arab countries fell by 4.6 per cent to 41,261 guests during the period under review.
Omani hotels received 1.53 million guests and the hotels generated a total revenue of OMR194.66 million in 2017, added the NCSI report.