Tourism

Oman hotel revenues increase more than 10%

July 16, 2024, 10:27 AM

Almost 300,000 European visitors contributed to Oman's hotel revenues growing by more than 10 percent

Hotel revenues across Oman were up by more than 10 percent in the first five months of 2024, fuelled by an increasing number of Asian and European visitors to the sultanate.

Three-to-five star hotels reported revenues of OR108 million ($281 million) at the end of May, the latest data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information shows.

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The total number of hotel guests rose by almost 14 percent to 913,677 over the period, up from 803,442 during the first five months of 2023. Hotel occupancy was up 6 percent compared with last year to reach 51.5 percent.

Omanis topped the number of guests in hotels, reaching 306,255. As many as 286,980 guests were European (up 19.6 percent), and 133,771 were from Asia (up 21 percent).

The number of guests from other GCC countries increased by 6.8 percent to 58,572, and African guests rose by 1.6 percent to reach 4,677. There were 13,446 visitors from Oceania.

In 2016 Oman launched a 25-year strategy to increase the number of tourists more than fourfold, from 2.6 million in 2015 to nearly 12 million a year by 2040.

The country wants to increase tourism’s contribution to GDP from 2.6 percent to 6 percent by building hotels and promoting destination “clusters”.

Non-oil activity in Oman increased by almost 4 percent in the first quarter of this year, helping to prop up a decline in revenues from the sultanate’s energy sector.