Once Inaccessible Oman Has Become Winter Vacation Choice for Europeans

by Richard H. Curtiss

Oman has the good news, bad news distinction of being one of the most beautiful countries in the Arab world, but also one of the hottest in the summer. So the main tourist season in this historic country of jagged mountains, wide beaches and palm-lined, spotlessly clean streets begins only in October, and extends no later than mid-April. During those six months, however, a country that didn't welcome tourists at all until the mid-1990s is crowded almost to capacity with sun-seeking refugees from Europe's grey winter skies.

Strangely, although Oman is no larger than the state of Kansas, it has two totally distinct climatic zones. From June 15 to Aug. 15, while the fertile coastal plain in the northeast of the country that includes the capital, Muscat, is baking in summer heat, the Dhofar region far to the southwest is bathed in a cool drizzle borne by monsoon winds that don't reach the rest of the country at all.

Sindbad the sailor and the thousands of seafarers like him who started their voyages from the ports of the Hadramaut coast, now divided between Oman's Dhofar province and the former South Yemen, knew about the monsoons that for half the year brought all the ports of East Africa within easy reach of their ships, and for the other half of the year wafted their vessels to South Asia and the Far East. Thus the Hadramautis brought Islam to countries all over Africa, and also to more distant Asian peoples in present-day Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippine island of Mindanao, and even to parts of China.

Now, although the monsoon winds no longer play a significant role in maritime commerce, they provide a unique second tourist season for Oman. During the summer when most of the cities of the Arabian peninsula and Gulf are suffering through their hottest months, whole families from those cities, particularly along the Gulf, fly or pack into their automobiles and drive to Salalah, capital of Dhofar province, to enjoy days of picnicking among green fields in the cool mists that provide such a contrast to their own hot summers.

The summer tourism of Dhofar province has been a part of Arabian peninsula life for as long as anyone can remember, but the winter European influx into Salalah, with its wide, clean white-sand beaches, and Muscat, Matrah, and the other sparkling new suburbs around Oman's capital, where ridges of the interior mountains, with their marvelously restored historic forts, dip directly into the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, is something brand new for conservative Oman.

Omani Director General of Tourism Mohamed Ali Said is both promoter and scorekeeper for this new industry that promises to become a major foreign exchange earner for his country, just at the time it is most needed. Oman has a 50-year supply of petroleum reserves, but the steep dip in world-wide prices threatens the country's generous social welfare programs.

Conservative Omanis have long been accustomed to the presence of Westerners, particularly Britons who have been deeply involved in the rapid modernization of the country since the ascension of Sultan Qaboos to the throne held by his Al bu Said dynasty since 1744. So the first Western tourists to arrive in significant numbers were friends and relatives of British subjects working in Oman. They still constituted a high percentage of the 183,000 tourists who came to northern Oman in 1997, and a lesser percentage of the 83,000 tourists recorded that year in Salalah.

But now, according to Mr. Said, the European tourists also come, roughly in order of numbers, from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy and Holland. In his words, they encounter "clean beaches, crystal waters, rock climbing, sand dunes, forts, castles, and the kindness of the Omani people." The latter is, in fact, legendary among all the peoples of the Middle East, and simply cannot be exaggerated.

Although the Omani government still is reluctant to encourage what Mr. Said calls "knapsackers" and "mass tourism," with their possible negative impact on the country's unique traditions and culture, Mr. Said is pleased with the steady increase in visits by quiet and affluent tourists, which began with charter tours arranged by Swiss, German and Austrian travel agencies and now have acquired a momentum of their own.

To handle the rapidly building influx, the Omani government looks increasingly to the private sector to accommodate both the tourists and the normal traffic of business visitors in the country's network of 60 hotels comprising a total of 3,750 rooms and 5,000 beds. Oman's target, according to Mr. Said, is to have 10,000 hotel beds by 2005, a significant achievement for a country that had no hotels at all before 1970.

Many of the exisiting hotels are managed by American chains. In addition to Sheraton and Holiday Inn hotels in the capital area, the Intercontinental and Hyatt hotels are situated on beaches just outside the capital, as are a number of other hotels offering five-star services comparable with those anywhere in the world, and at slightly lower prices than similar facilities in Europe and the Far East.

The only government-operated hotel in the capital area, the spectacular Al Bustan, serves both as a government guest house and a tourist mecca, and has been voted one of the best hotels in the world.

The only popular hotel for Western visitors to Salalah is a Holiday Inn, situated on a spacious tract surrounded by coconut palms, banana plantations and a wide white sand beach. Guests have a choice between ocean surf or the hotel's large outdoor pool.

There also are modern hotel facilities on the heavily traveled road leading from the capital to Nizwa, Bahla and other interior towns with their huge, restored forts and picturesque, photogenic suqs full of local handicrafts.

Mr. Said is quick to point out that Oman enthusiastically welcomes North American tourists, but given the time and expense involved in getting from the U.S., where the East Coast is 9 time zones and the West Coast 12 time zones—exactly half a world—away from Oman, he recognizes that the U.S. tourists who arrive in Oman are a special breed.

"Americans are very keen for details of history and culture," he points out. "We have all this, as well as a beautiful, clean and unspoiled natural environment, so we have by far the most to offer such tourists of any country in the region."

While charter tours from the U.S. are few and far between, U.S. visitors are not. Increasingly cruise ships are stopping in Oman, and its port facilities have been large enough to accommodate every cruise ship that has come to call in recent years except for the Queen Elizabeth II. When it arrived in the capital area, its 1,200 passengers were ferried into port in lighters, and divided into groups so that they would not all arrive at the same time in the country's inland forts or the picturesque suq in Matrah, the country's commercial hub immediately adjacent to Muscat, the historic political capital.

In the Matrah suq tourists can purchase goods ranging from redolent packages of frankincense and tiny terra cotta incense burners to traditional hand-worked silver and gold jewelry, some inlaid with semi-precious stones, and other handicrafts that reflect the skills and varied traditions of the Arab world, Iran and the Indian subcontinent.

"Three Cunard ships visited in 1998," Director General Said noted, "and we expect more." Aside from the cruise ships, the largest numbers of American visitors come from the expatriate communities in eastern Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf. Commercial aircrews, for whom Oman is a favorite stop, also comprise a portion of Oman's tourist trade. The Seeb international airport itself is at the far end from Muscat of the chain of modern suburbs, separated by picturesque hills dipping into the sea, that together are described as "greater Matrah."

The distinguishing feature of all of these bustling suburbs, which also contain most of the government ministries, the embassies, and a diplomatic residential quarter among the hundreds of spacious homes of government employees, is the pleasing manner in which these meticulously planned communities complement each other. All of the buildings are sparkling white, with dark wooden trim around arched windows and doorways and, in the case of government ministries and some commercial buildings, great ornate wooden gates reflecting traditional Omani decorative motifs.

The combined impression of clean, orderly, strikingly beautiful buildings and streets did not come about by chance. The close personal interest taken by Oman's ruler, particularly in the early years of his 28-year reign, is legendary.

This attention to detail still manifests itself in regular scheduled visits by Sultan Qaboos to all parts of the country. On such visits he is accompanied by the cabinet ministers involved in direct services to the people, to meet with and listen to the comments and complaints of Oman's citizenry, and then take action accordingly.

The impression of Oman's stark mountains reaching right down into the towns and beaches, its carefully maintained streets and modern, well-kept buildings, and its contrasting mountain oasis villages, palm-lined superhighways and its broad well-watered coastal plains is extraordinarily pleasing to short-term visitors and long-term residents alike. Casual conversations with the visiting tourists confirm this. Considering the short time tourists have been coming to Oman, a surprising number turn out to be repeat visitors.

They return so frequently that the next challenge Director General Said and other government officials may face is what to do about wealthy visitors from northern countries who may want to build or buy permanent homes for annual winter stays in once-inaccessible Oman.

Richard Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SIDEBAR

When in Muscat, "Check Out the New Hyatt Regency Hotel"

"Since you're going to Muscat, check out the new Hyatt Regency hotel there," my son-in-law, who had just visited Oman, told me only a day or two before I left. I was already booked at the Muscat Intercontinental Hotel, which, along with the Gulf Hotel, is one of my two favorites because, although they are well within the national capital's busy "greater Matrah" area, they also are at opposite ends of a long stretch of open beach which has been designated the "Al Qurum Nature Park" and is protected from commercial development. So I didn't give his advice much thought until I found myself scheduled to interview an engineer in the Hyatt lobby about Oman's brand new Port Raysut, which I had been invited to Oman to cover.

The five-star Hyatt Regency hotel, situated an easy walk down the beach at low tide from my own hotel, turned out to be so spectacular that I stayed to talk to Mssrs. Adel Mohammed Sharif Al Bakri, an American- educated relative and representative of the hotel's owner, and Shafiq al Barwani, an engineer who helped plan and build the hotel and who has remained on the staff since it opened in late 1997.

Although the Hyatt hotel chain has the management contract, the sole owner is Sheikh Ahmed Farid Awlaqi, a contractor who left his native Shabwa, near Aden, some 25 years ago after the communist takeover that turned his homeland for a generation into the People's Republic of Southern Yemen. After the fall of the communist government there, North and South Yemen reunited, but Mr. Awlaqi, who has built many of the super-highways that link Oman's scattered cities and towns, has remained in Oman.

Although the hotel, which cost $180 million to build and furnish, according to Mr. Al Bakri, represents collaboration between a local architect and an American interior designer, it was planned by its owner and "its external concept is from the owner himself."

Some of the major expenditures were made on the spectacular polished stone and marble floors and walls, which cover 70 percent of the hotel's surface areas. There are also alabaster lampshades, fountains, statuary and antique works of Omani art such as carved wooden tables and large original wooden doors from traditional houses.

A lower lobby area opens onto a spacious open-air rear courtyard that includes a swimming pool, hundreds of outdoor tables and reclining chairs, and an outdoor restaurant featuring Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and other Oriental cuisine. This area in turn opens onto tennis courts and the beach, with chairs and permanent thatched umbrella structures on the sand to protect guests from the sun.

A spacious upper-level lobby, which includes a night sky dome and vast crystal chandeliers from Austria, adjoins the hotel's main entrance and circular driveway and provides a lounge area from which guests can look down on an indoor restaurant and also look outside, through three-story-high windows, into the rear patio and swimming pool area enclosed on three sides by rooms, each with its own balcony. The tall windows, partly of clear glass and partly of brightly colored glass in traditional Arab geometric designs, were made in England according to specifications supplied by the owner and his architects. The upper lobby is dominated by a nearly life-sized Italian sculpture of an Arab mounted on a horse and holding a hooded hunting falcon in his hand as he rides.

The hotel contains 280 rooms including 50 suites. The suites are entered through original carved wooden doors salvaged from the outer gates of traditional Omani homes, with no two alike. Another unique touch is provided by the John Berry bar, named after a sunken English ship offshore to which the owner has salvage rights. On sale are coins and other items brought up by divers from the wreck.

Although the government-owned Al Bustan hotel, built 10 years ago on a private beach on the other side of the capital area, remains Oman's most spectacular hostelry, Mr. Al Bakri says that the Hyatt's rooms are larger and, in his words, "more comfortable."

The Hyatt's location also gives it an advantage, since it is situated on the edge of the suburban diplomatic quarter and close to the buildings housing many of the government ministries. The result is that it is a popular spot for Omani wedding receptions and for business and government conferences. During my visit, the small Marine Guard detachment from the American Embassy held its traditional formal bash, the annual Marine Ball marking the November founding of the Corps, at the Hyatt Regency.

The visitor's taste may lean toward the 25-year-old but completely reburbished Muscat Intercontinental with its beach, pool and spacious landscaped grounds, the Gulf Hotel with both a popular pool and access to a beach, the Al Bustan with its towering central atrium and its own secluded private beach, the sparkling-new Hyatt Regency, or other five-star hotels. Or one's budget may dictate more modest establishments in downtown Matrah or in the modern suburbs of "Greater Matrah." Whatever, there is accommodation to fit every taste and most pocketbooks in Oman's still picturesque but remarkably open, clean and orderly national capital area —RHC