Thursday 03 / April / 2025
Muscat: Oman’s Ministry of Tourism is ramping up its digital plans to attract more young visitors to the Sultanate, as the country focuses on expanding tourism as one of the key areas of economic growth for the future.
Speaking at a conference, Maitha Al Mahrouqi, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism, shared some of the plans the ministry has for 2019 and beyond, as well as the importance of technology in the modern-day tourism industry.
“Technology is here to stay,” she said. “We all know that it is not going anywhere, so embracing it in your own way has to be a necessity for everyone. In case you want to start any technology platform, please start it only if you have world-class expertise and experiences. You cannot compromise on that. Managing security closely and personally is also a mandate to everyone who seeks to do
business.”
“We at the Ministry of Tourism are also embracing technology,” added Al Mahrouqi. “We are already building our executive dashboard, which will be the world’s foremost dashboard reporting system and I am very proud to say that we have started to execute that. This will enable us to see data in real time and even see bookings that are recorded, allowing us to take early market strategic decisions. The Ministry of Tourism will be rolling out a digital transformation project early next year.”
The plans Al Mahrouqi shared tie in with the long-term digital drive of the Ministry of Tourism, which in its 2016 Annual Report had highlighted eight areas to strengthen as part of its digital communication projects.
These include preparing the ministry’s digital communication strategy, assessment of the current status of the ministry’s digital platforms, designing a digital dashboard to monitor the latest developments in the ministry’s social media and to develop and implement a strategy to develop search engine optimisation (SEO).
In addition, the plan looks to manage Experience Oman social networking accounts, prepare reports on the same, includes the training of ministry staff, and involves the daily management and follow-up of the digital presence of the marketing identity of the Sultanate as a tourist destination. The Ministry of Tourism has decided to do this using visual digital concepts.
Al Mahrouqi added: “Technology in the last few years has transformed our lives and the industry, whatever that may be, and this is more so in the case of travel and tourism. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are now embedded in software intelligence and used from day-to-day. How we are managing to benefit from the understanding and learning of these technologies to have better experiences is important, because finally, it is the customer experience that will count in this industry.”
“Now, we all have to contend with the new players, and maybe some of the traditional players are learning to move in this direction,” she said. “We will always have this complicity to work very smoothly with travel agencies on the one hand and the airlines on the other to give customers seamless experiences. To do this, we have to keep an eye on new industries and disrupters such as technology start-ups.”
Kenny Scullion, sales director of online sales at global tourism solution provider Sabre Hospitality, said that travellers’ decisions to go to a place would rely strongly on the feedback of how those who previously attempted to visit a place had arranged to go there.
“Travellers’ expectations are set by consumer feedback,” he said. “Every one of us is a consumer. If you think about when you shop, or when you make a transaction, or when you do your banking, when you do that online, that’s the sort of experience travellers want to experience when they purchase travel, and we are still not there, but we are trying to get there.”
“It is important to remember that when you have a good experience on other channels, that’s the sort of experience consumers will want from you, whether they are going to check in on social media, whether they are going to use your mobile app, or whether they go through your website,” added Scullion.
“The importance of mobile technology here is key, and the emergence of the mobile has been absolutely huge. In fact, if we look at Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE for example, they have almost 100 per cent mobile penetration and that’s among the highest in the world.”
“Some 70 per cent of those who access a mobile phone in these nations have access to at least one social media platform, and some of them have access to multiple platforms; so where do you spend your money?” he asked.
“In the Middle East, there is such a young and affluent population coming up, so they are the ones driving this shift. If you look at Oman, there’s been a 150 per cent growth in terms of penetration for smartphones, and that’s massive. That puts Oman at number three, only behind Germany which is at number two and the UAE at number one.”
According to the tourism statistics bulletin released by the NCSI (National Centre for Statistics and Information) in September 2018, 3.258 million visitors came to Oman in 2017. Of these, 2.372 million were overnight visitors, while 886,000 were same-day visitors. In total, inbound tourism expenditure amounted to some OMR342 million, up from OMR322.5 million the previous year. On an average, each visitor spent 7.9 nights in the Sultanate, amounting to 18.847 million nights in total. The average spend of each visitor was slightly above OMR105.
In addition, outbound tourism from Oman amounted to 6.368 million travellers, marking a sharp jump from 5.902 million the previous year. Of these, 4.473 million were overnight visitors, spending an average of 20.9 nights overseas, while 1.895 million were same-day visitors. The average expenditure for an outbound visitor was around OMR72.7.
