Hotels in Oman witnessed a significant increase in the number of European overnight guests, reporting a 15.4 per cent increase in November 2017.

Europeans became the largest segment of nationalities of guests, with the number of guests from the region totaling 518,629 in November, compared to 449,348 during the same period in 2016.

Omani guests came the second with 348,161 at the end of November 2017, a decline by 18.8 per cent when compared 473,159 during the same period in 2016.

GCC guests came third with 199,342, the Asians fourth with 145,183, other Arabs from non-GCC countries came fifth with 59,880, American guests came sixth with 48,158, guests from Ocean countries came seventh with 13,421, African guests came eighth with 9,636 and 16,531 guests from other nationalities.

Overall, the occupancy rate of hotels under the three-star and five-star categories in the sultanate by the end of November 2017 declined by 0.4 per cent to reach to 56.5 per cent compared to 56.7 per cent in the same period in 2016, while the revenue increased by 2.4 per cent to reach to RO174,049,000 million ($451.4 million) compared to OMR169,961,000 (440.8 million) during the same period of 2016.

The statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) for guests numbers at the sultanate's three- to five-star hotels showed a total of 1.39 million guests in November 2017, a decline of 4 per cent compared to 1.45 million guests during the same period in 2016. - TradeArabia News Service