There were around 55 million tourist visiting the Middle East in 2011 (10% down from 2010). Oman hosted some 1.7 million foreign tourist which is 3% of the pie. In other words one in 33 visitors to MidEast decided to include Oman on its itinerary. These people were estimated to spend 1.28 billion USD, which is 753 USD per visitor. The cruise liners had a considerable share from this, disembarking close to quarter a million visitors last season.
The tourism authorities however do not seem to sit on these impressive results (which were considerably growing in the last couple of years) and aim for more. Much more. Vision 2020 talks about 12 million annual visitors by 2020. That would be equal to what Egypt has now, and a third more than what UAE hosted in 2011 (9 million). Assuming current spending per visitor, the generated receipts would result in 9 billion USD revenue for the country (oil revenues budgeted for 2012 are over 15 billion USD). I hope these are achievable targets, certainly it will take a lot of creativity and motivation from the tourism professionals to make this happen.
Achieving these targets will not only mean courageous planning and sharp implementation, but could require a much wider effort from the whole country: authorities and population alike. Taking the unrivaled friendliness of Omanis and elevating is to a genuine hospitality culture, along with preserving the natural attractions will be key. The whole visitor experience will have to be improved from the sense of arrival, through the driving around experience, to the wow effect of exploring the clean and untouched beaches, wadi's and mountains. Tourist are very picky and harsh customers, and while they can appreciate a sense of local touch in most of what they see, they will go unforgiving on quality of food, lack of road safety, slow or overpriced service, lack of hygiene or general cleanness. So there is a lot to do and cannot be all expected from the tourism ministry.
(numbers should be considered indicative and are taken from unverified online sources: newspapers, magazines and third party analysis)
The tourism authorities however do not seem to sit on these impressive results (which were considerably growing in the last couple of years) and aim for more. Much more. Vision 2020 talks about 12 million annual visitors by 2020. That would be equal to what Egypt has now, and a third more than what UAE hosted in 2011 (9 million). Assuming current spending per visitor, the generated receipts would result in 9 billion USD revenue for the country (oil revenues budgeted for 2012 are over 15 billion USD). I hope these are achievable targets, certainly it will take a lot of creativity and motivation from the tourism professionals to make this happen.Achieving these targets will not only mean courageous planning and sharp implementation, but could require a much wider effort from the whole country: authorities and population alike. Taking the unrivaled friendliness of Omanis and elevating is to a genuine hospitality culture, along with preserving the natural attractions will be key. The whole visitor experience will have to be improved from the sense of arrival, through the driving around experience, to the wow effect of exploring the clean and untouched beaches, wadi's and mountains. Tourist are very picky and harsh customers, and while they can appreciate a sense of local touch in most of what they see, they will go unforgiving on quality of food, lack of road safety, slow or overpriced service, lack of hygiene or general cleanness. So there is a lot to do and cannot be all expected from the tourism ministry.
(numbers should be considered indicative and are taken from unverified online sources: newspapers, magazines and third party analysis)
No comments:
Post a Comment