Revenues of hotels in Oman rise

Muscat: The total revenue of Omani hotels in three-to-five-star category rose by 5.9 per cent to OMR143.1 million in the first nine months of 2018 compared to OMR135.1 million for the same period last year.
Hotel occupancy rates also increased by 2 per cent to reach 55.7 per cent during January-September 2018 against 54.6 per cent for the same period of 2017, according 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 nine- month period of 2018 declined by 6.8 per cent to 1,042,468 from 1,118,021 for the same period of 2017.
Among the nationalities, Europeans constituted the maximum number of guests at 342,762, but fell by 13.4 per cent compared to the same nine-month period of 2017. This was followed by 293,975 Omani guests. However, the number of Omani hotel guests declined by 7.3 percent compared to the same period of last year.
Likewise, guests from GCC countries fell by 10.3 per cent to 152,891 guests in the first nine months of 2018, from 170,423 for the same period of last year.
Meanwhile, there was an increase in the number of African, Asian and Oceanian visitors by 17.1 per cent, 11.9 per cent and 11.8 per cent
to 8,910, 132,520 and 10,529 guests, respectively, during the January- September 2018 period, the provisional data released by NCSI
revealed.