Must go to Muscat

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Even non-Muslims can visit Muscat’s Grand Mosque on daily tours.

The latter 258-room property has 11 meeting rooms, including a 704m² ballroom, that can cater to up to 500 guests in banquet style, making it a popular choice for Oman's emerging meetings industry.

"Currently that is a small new market we are looking at," says Harish Neel, assistant director of sales and marketing, InterContinental. "In fact the whole of Oman is looking at MICE at this point.

"There has been a lot of interest, especially since Oman is becoming more popular with tourists and companies wanting to come in. Through the summer Muscat does normally take a bit of a drop in terms of occupancy levels, but then again at this point there are [few] direct flights to Salalah so people coming through Muscat might want to stay a day or two for a leisure break.

"However, knowing the growing business demands in Oman, summer is looking quite promising for the corporate side of business."

According to the Ministry's Al-Mamari, there are currently some 8700 rooms in Oman, but the government hopes to increase that figure to around 13,000 by 2011.

The newest hotel on the Muscat hospitality scene is Shangri-La's 681-room Barr al Jissah Resort and Spa, which now accounts for some 47% of the city's five-star hotel room inventory.

The property is in effect three hotels in one, comprising Al Waha, a family resort mainly focused on the leisure market; Al Bandar, an up-market property for couples and corporate clients, and Al Husn, a self-proclaimed six-star property for luxury travelers and corporate clients.

"It's an excellent place for a honeymoon or if you are married, somewhere to take your wife on your anniversary," explains Tamer Mecky, director of business development at the hotel.

"We can cater to indoor meetings of up to 900, and we have an amphitheatre with an open garden that can cater to up to 1200 guests. We have an attraction that is perfect for the MICE and incentives market; the Omani Heritage Village. It showcases how the Omanis used to live years before. Visitors are shown how they made the Kandjar (the little knife that they carry in their belt), and they get a souvenir too."

While most visitors come from Europe, substantial numbers of European ex-pats living in the UAE have stayed at the hotel since it opened four months ago: "It's only four-and-a-half hours from Dubai if you drive - people would do this just to go and see the dolphins," Mecky says.

"We have witnessed an increase in the number of visitors from Kuwait, as well as the UAE. Saudi Arabia is yet to grow more; the Saudi market is huge and we should get a better share of that. Salalah is very popular, but Muscat is not yet - it is getting there though."

Destination management companies like Zahara Tours are working to grow the meetings industry market, developing specialised itineraries for incentives groups, or adding a twist of adventure to tried and tested outings.

"With MICE groups, instead of the normal Muscat city tour, we will enhance the programme by making it a sort of rally," says Harsh Abrol, manager, Zahara Tours.

"We give them some clues to get from point A to point B and so on, and then we take them to a souk. If they were normal tourists we would take them around and explain to them what everything is, but if it is a MICE group, we would give them a small amount of pocket money and some scraps of paper with words written in the Arabic language and then they have to buy these things."

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