WTTC counts travel and tourism at RO 3.5 billion — 8.1% of Omani GDP — in 2025, up from 7.7% in 2024, while the national statistics office’s stricter direct measure reached RO 1.107 billion. Both ledgers point the same way: up.
The international ledger first. WTTC puts 2024 at RO 3.3 billion — 7.7% of GDP with 212,700 jobs — after a 2023 that grew 35% to RO 2.8 billion, when international visitor spending jumped 69% to OMR 1.1 billion. The 2024 split ran 52% domestic to 48% international, and 65.6% leisure to 34.4% business. The 2025 reading, RO 3.5 billion and 8.1%, makes tourism the most convincing non-hydrocarbon line in the Omani accounts.
The national ledger is stricter and more interesting. NCSI counts only direct value added: 2.7% of GDP and RO 1.107 billion in 2025, inside a tourism GDP contribution of RO 1.135 billion — up 37.6% on 2018. Hotel activities generated RO 252.1 million of that, ahead of travel agencies and reservation services at RO 242.7 million; the country counted about 1,475 hotels by the end of 2025 and more than 24,000 tourism establishments, 43.5% of them in Muscat. The gap between 8.1% and 2.7% is methodology — total versus direct — not disagreement.
Oman has $6.76 billion of tourism investment in the pipeline, and the capital region takes the anchor share: the Al Mouj and Shatti Al-Qurum hotel corridor, the airport city and free zone, the Muttrah waterfront upgrades and the cruise berth expansion all sit within forty kilometers of each other.
WTTC’s 2026 regional update names Oman one of the Gulf’s four growth stories of resilience and projects its travel economy expanding from $7.9 billion to $12 billion by 2036. For context, tourism already contributes more to GDP growth than any non-oil sector except logistics, and unlike logistics it sells the one asset Oman has in surplus: the country itself.
Whichever ledger you prefer, the direction is identical — and the composition is the tell: a majority-domestic, two-thirds-leisure market with a rising international share is a market with headroom. Muscat is where that headroom gets monetized first. Invest in the room, not the tower: Oman’s tourism economy rewards patience, which happens to be its national sport.
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