Omantel has announced its strategic partnership with the Ministry of Tourism to further enrich tourism in Oman with digital services. As part of the partnership, tourists will enjoy a new big-data based application that offers a comprehensive travel experience in addition to staying connected through Omantel’s high speed Wi-Fi at a number of the most visited forts in the Sultanate.

As a leading national company, Omantel plays a major role in supporting the e-government and actively participates in building bridges between the private and public sectors.

HE Ahmed bin Nasser Al Mahrizi, Minister of Tourism, stated: “The world continues to witness ongoing developments in telecommunications, and catching up with these developments is essential for Oman’s tourism strategy to meet its targets and increase the influx of tourists to the Sultanate. By offering advanced technologies to tourists, we are helping tourists to communicate more efficiently and easing the process of making reservations, finding information and travel maps. Tourist will also be able to document their journeys while in Oman, which will significantly help us to reach a wider audience”.

He also added, “We value this strategic partnership with Omantel as a leading company in the Sultanate that offers advanced telecommunication services including smart solutions, and we look forward for a greater collaboration that will lead to a further enhancement of current services and bring in new services at various tourist destinations.”

Talal Al Mamari, CEO of Omantel, said: “We have witnessed a major transformation in the tourism sector during the past few years. The tourism infrastructure has been developed and marketing strategy enhanced, this resulted in an influx of tourists to the Sultanate as well as boosting domestic tourism.”

He further said, “We look at this partnership with great importance. As a leading national company, supporting the growth of our nation is a cornerstone of our values, and this is why we are glad to join hands with the Ministry of Tourism and other government bodies, and we always strive to deliver services that exceed our customers’ expectations.”

Fadi Nasser, GM of ICT division at Omantel, commented: “Our cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism have reached an important milestone and we continue working together to further empower tourism with digital service. The big-data based application (eConcierge) will allow tourists to plan their journeys beforehand and discover various tourist attractions, activities, beverage and dining options and entertainment events that they can enjoy during their stay. This leading application was developed in partnership with Infoline and the tourism-specialised team out of the National CEO Programme (NCP). Furthermore, Bahla Fort and 9 more forts will be equipped with a high-speed Wi-Fi connection.”

According to Nasser, Omantel has expanded its networks in some of the most visited tourist attractions, like Jebel Al Akhdar and Jebel Shams.

He also said, “Aside from that, we have helped the Ministry of Tourism to stay connected with its directorates in various governorates, thanks to the smart solutions that include big-data platform and video conferencing.”

Recently, Omantel has launched an online platform using big data analytics cutting-edge technology that allows ministry of tourism to monitor the traffic behavior and patterns in Dhofar to enable the ministry with better planning tool on real-time basis, in addition to an effective communication tool with external and internal tourists for awareness purposes. The platform is on its early stages and plethora of additional features are set to be included in later stages, these features include information and statistics on tourist attractions in Dhofar specially in Salalah region that can be extended all over the sultanate to push together the tourism economy in Oman along with government support.

Investing in the future of the nation, Omantel connects even the most remote communities of the Sultanate to each other and the rest of the world. Omantel is the Sultanate’s first and leading integrated telecommunications services provider, enabling the digital society to flourish, allowing new ways of doing business and delivering a world of information, news and entertainment.