Local sheen missing in Salalah charter boom

Entrepreneurs ask for benefits from package deals of tour operators

There is no denying the fact that all the star hotels in Salalah are fully booked as the operators involved in bringing tourists in charter flights from European countries are able to bring much more guests than the city’s expectations.

The numbers need to be calculated and recalculated.

Two German charters with a capacity of 360 passengers are coming twice a week, there are two weekly charters from Poland with 180 passengers each; one weekly flight from Italy with 180 passengers; one weekly flight with 300 passengers from Italy; and two flights from Slovakia and Czechoslovakia with 50 to 60 passengers per week. The total, taken together some individual tourists, is more than 40,000 in a season spanning from September to May.

This sounds good and booming. But the local businessmen including the taxi drivers, restaurant owners, local transport operators and even small coffee shop owners are asking a very pertinent question: “how do I know that, that many tourists are coming and booming Salalah tourism scene if my business is as usual and even for cosmetic purposes I do not find them moving on Salalah roads?”

“It means that the tourists are coming totally on a package tour, staying in the respective hotels, eating, drinking and going back home keeping us in the rain shadow of so called booming charter business,” said Mohammed who keeps an aspiration of becoming a big businessman one day and runs many coffee shops in the city. He suggested having some system in which some businesses out of these tourist arrivals should have come to small businessmen like him.

“I chose to be an entrepreneur after my college education. I do not have any complain choosing this path than becoming an employee in one of the government or private set ups. I am happy with whatever I am earning, but feel like some policy in which the entrepreneurs also benefit along with the big tour operators who are bringing the tourists on package deals.”

Mohammed appreciated the efforts of those tour operators in making Salalah a major tourist destination. “They have right to have big share, but for the sake of sustainability small tour operators, guides, small transporters etc should be involved in the process,” he said.

When countered that many tourists are seen in traditional Hafa souk, Mohammed said “this is the answer to my question that the tourists are going wherever they are taken under their package tour. They are not going on their own due to various issues involved in between.”

Echoing the same feeling, Jamila Mubarak Kora, owner of a private house museum in New Salalah, said she heard about many European tourists coming to Salalah but not getting benefited out of it. “In the Salalah tour plan the operators should make plan so that the tourists visit our house museums. The tourists will get to know about Arab/ Dhofari way of living, past and present, and we get encouragement to maintain our house museums and earn something to keep our passion,” she said.

She insisted that this is the way the house museums can become commercially viable. “It is possible with some arrangement for the tourists to visit these house museums and let them feel the Dhofari lifestyle in a homely atmosphere.”

A local businessman, who is mainly into construction sector, sought some plan so that more and more local people are involved in this sector and contribute towards making Salalah tourism more viable and sustainable.