Hotels and forts face brunt of Covid-19 curbs

The Covid-19 pandemic had a serious impact on the tourism sector for two years as it was evident from the figures released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) in its annual bulletin.

The Minister of Heritage and Tourism (MoHT) recently told media persons that the pandemic badly hit the tourism sector and nearly 20,000 job opportunities were lost in the process. He said the sector’s losses amount to nearly RO1.3 billion during this period.

Statistics confirmed that the occupancy rate of hotels in different governorates of the country was affected as it came down from 33.1 per cent in 2021 to 37.4 per cent in 2019. The occupancy rates were only 26.4 per cent in 2020.

The occupancy rate of hotels in Muscat dropped from 53.1 per cent in 2019 to 39.7 per cent in 2021, but it was slightly better than 30.3 per cent in 2020.

In Dhofar, the occupancy rate dropped from 41.6 per cent in 2019 to 25.8 in 2021.

The five-star hotels in the country were the most affected as their occupancy rates dropped from 54.4 per cent in 2019 to 29.2 per cent in 2021, compared to four-star hotels whose occupancy rates dropped to 42.7 in 2021 from 54.8 in 2019 and three-star hotels whose occupancy rates dropped from 52.9 per cent in 2019 to 45.1 per cent in 2021.

Forts and castles were also affected by the lack of visitors, including the Nizwa Fort in the Al Dakhiliyah Governorate is the most popular tourist destination in the country in its category.

Overall, the number of visitors to castles dropped from 426,525 in 2019 to 133,922 in 2020 and 111, 211 in 2021.

A total of 55,636 people visited Nizwa Fort in 2021 compared to 44,047 in 2020 and 143,767 in 2019.

Bahla Fort received 10,088 visitors in 2021 compared to 11,034 in 2020 and 31,134 in 2019.

Jibreen Castle received 14,521 visitors in 2021, compared to 19,977 in 2020 and 65,549 in 2019. Khasab Castle received 2,782 visitors in 2021, compared to 10,429 in 2020 and 31,845 visitors in 2019.

Muttrah Fort received 8,553 visitors in 2021, compared to 15,930 in 2020 and 26,862 in 2019.

@vinot_nair