Omani National Centre for Statistics and Information says that GCC nations, India, Yemen, Pakistan and Germany are amongst top 5 international arrivals for Oman from January to the end of May 2022. As many as 111,883 Indian travellers have visited the nation during that period compared to 24,881 recorded in April this year.

As tourism slowly recovers with lifting of Covid-19 restrictions by many countries, the Sultanate of Oman received over 794,000 inbound travellers in the period January 1-May 31 this year.

According to the tourism indicators for May 2022 released by National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), while 1.5 million travellers had departed Oman by the end of May 2022, the nation received 794,000 travellers, mainly from the fellow GCC nations, India, Yemen, Germany, and United Kingdom.

A press release states that the top five nationalities arriving into Oman out of the total inbound arrivals includes GCC nations (349,986), India (111,883), Yemen (28,495), Pakistan (23,603) and Germany (23,289). As many as 216,000 visitors arrived in Oman in the month of May 2022 alone as compared to 6,036 in May 2021, an increase of over 35 times.

The number of Omanis departing the country during the month of May this year was registered at 184,000 compared to 135,969 recorded in the same month of the previous year when many travellers could not leave Oman following strict Covid-19 restrictions.

While this was so, the percentage of Gulf visitors increased by 54.5 pc out of the total inbound visitors during the month of May. As many as 216,000 visitors arrived in Oman during that month compared to against 6,036 in same period last year.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, three to five-star hotels generated a revenue of OMR 73 million from 3-5 star hotels by the end of May from 655,000 tourists as compared to the total occupancy rate in hotels of 31.6 pc with 82,000 guests in the month of April 2022.