Total revenue of Omani hotels in three-to-five-star category rose by 10.3 per cent to RO85.36 million in the first four months of 2018 from RO77.36 million for the corresponding January-April period of last year.

Hotel occupancy rates also increased by 5.4 per cent to 68.7 per cent during January-April period of 2018, against 65.2 per cent for the same period of last year, shows the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

However, the total number of guests in Omani hotels in January-April period of 2018 declined by 4.3 per cent to 561,696 from 586,788 for the same period of 2017.

Among various nationalities, Europeans constituted maximum number of visitors at 242,967, which showed a fall of 13.6 per cent over the same four-month period of 2017. This was followed by Omani guests, which stood at 132,839. Similarly, the number of Omani hotel guests declined by 5.6 per cent when compared to the same period of last year.

A phenomenal growth was witnessed in the case of African, Oceanian and GCC visitors, which went up by 37.4 per cent, 22.3 per cent and 13.8 per cent to 4,510, 6,336 and 58,732 guests, respectively, during the four-month period, shows the provisional data released by NCSI.

Asian visitors rose by 18.2 per cent to 61,681 tourists, while guests from other Arab countries fell by 5.6 per cent to 22,863 guests during the period under review.

Omani hotels received 1.53 million guests and the hotels generated a total revenue of OMR194.66 million in 2017, added the NCSI report.