Saturday 27 / April / 2024
Muscat: Hotels and travel agents in Oman have reported rise in bookings, and are hopeful tourists from overseas will gradually return to the country in the months to come.
The decision by the government to allow travellers from 103 countries to spend 14 days in the country without a pre-booked visa will also help attract more visitors.
“As part of the efforts to support the tourism sector in the Sultanate, it has been decided to extend the exemption period for the nationals of 103 countries from the entry visa for upto 14 days as part of specific regulations and conditions,” said a statement from the Royal Oman Police.
Although the cooler winter months do make up the tourist season in Oman, the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected international travel, but the hoteliers in the country say they have seen significant increases in domestic travellers.
Michael Kuhn, the cluster general manager for Park Inn, said his hotel has seen decent business before the recent decision to temporarily close Oman’s borders for a week to limit the spread of the virus.
“What we have seen is that people are keen to travel, but they are obviously not able to do so right now because of the pandemic, so domestic tourism has seen a rise, especially since last December,” he said.
“Before the borders were closed, we also did see visitors from the UAE stay with us. We are also taking many bookings for the coming months. Hopefully, this decision to temporarily shut the borders only lasts for a week, and the hospitality sector can continue to recover a bit,” adds Kuhn.
“Our hotel occupancy is currently at 40 percent, which is very good when you look at the factors affecting us right now. The cruise ships that would normally come to Oman aren’t there this time around, and there is little to no international air travel anywhere around the world.”
Kuhn said that tourists returning to Oman depend on how vast the COVID-19 vaccine is distributed all over the world, because that would go a long way in reducing people’s fear of travel, which is currently in many people’s minds.
“Right now, one of the main issues people today have is the fear of infection if they travel, as well as the mandatory seven-day quarantine,” he said.
“Once vaccines are distributed across the world, and the number of cases go down then the fear of infection will vanish, and you will see international travel resume once again,” he says.
This was a viewpoint shared by Siraj Memon, the cluster director of sales and marketing in Oman for Anantara, which owns and operates two resorts in the country.
“What we have seen is that a lot of people in the country are keen to see Oman despite all the travel curbs in place,” he said.
“Our mountain property in Jabal Akdhar has done well since the summer months, because people came there to escape the heat, while our Al Baleed resort by the beach in Salalah has picked up a bit after September.”
“A lot of the bookings we get right now are the last minutes, with people looking to get away for a short break or for the weekend, but what will really help us is if Oman is included on a travel bubble with the European countries, because they and the GCC are our main markets,” he explained.
Memon was also hopeful that business would pick up over the next couple of months. “It’s not just Oman… globally the entire travel and tourism sector has been hit,” he reveals. “I think the arrival of the vaccine will really help things along, but it will definitely still take time before the confidence to travel returns.”
Adding this, Faiyaz Khan, the general manager of Travel Point, a travel agency in Oman, says the reduction of the mandatory quarantine period would automatically bring more tourists to the country.
“This is of course a very understandable safety precaution that many countries have taken around the world,” he says. “For that to happen, the number of cases around the world will need to fall, and then the quarantine period could be reduced to maybe two days. Most people come to Oman for seven to 10 days anyway, so to quarantine for one week and then spend another seeing the country is not something they want to do right now.”
“We have received a lot of enquiries, though, for February and March, and we had many in January as well, but the border closure has once again affected travel,” Khan went on to say. “When tourism to Oman does increase, the decision of the government to allow people from 103 countries to come here without pre-booking a visa will really help.”
Michael Kuhn added, “If you look at other countries that have benefited from this, they have done so because it makes it easy for people from overseas to visit them.”
