The travel and tourism sector of Salalah will experience exponential growth, says Omer Kaddouri, president and CEO of Rotana.
According to Kaddouri, more than 3,000 hotel rooms in the region are due for completion by the end of 2014.
In 2013, 435,000 visitors from the Gulf region explored the Omani city during the Khareef (monsoon) season, an increase of more than 80,000 from 2012.
“[At the Salalah Rotana Resort, the main feeder market is] Oman and the GCC region, with 25 per cent of our guests coming from Oman, 25 per cent from the UAE, 25 per cent from KSA, ten per cent from Kuwait, ten per cent from Qatar and five per cent from Bahrain. The region is also very popular among German-speaking countries, such as Germany, Switzerland and Austria, followed by the UK, Russia, Scandinavia and France,” Says Kaddouri.
The new Salalah Airport, expected to be completed this year, will have the capacity to handle one million passengers, with future plans to extend the capacity to six million.