Travellers to Oman booking quarantine hotels face long wait times

With rates varying from RO 15 to RO 50 per day, hotels and quarantine centres in the country are registering a record number of people on quarantine after the rule of institutional quarantine came into effect.

Accordingly, hotels, apartments, premises which are permitted to carry out quarantine operations are packed and pre-booking a room for next two weeks seems to be next to impossible, according to various hoteliers and relatives of passengers who are arriving in the weeks to come.

“I was trying to locate a single room for my friend who is arriving this weekend but my search proved to be of no use as all registered hotels and quarantine centres are fully booked for next two weeks’’, Lovel Edathil, an expatriate in Muscat told the Observer.

With the hotels overflowing with bookings, surplus bookings have been outsourced to other hotels and similar institutions in other governorates where the passenger wouldn’t feel discomfort while satisfying the quarantine policy.

“We are too packed with bookings that I’ve already stuck deals with hotels and quarantine centres in places like Nizwa, Sur, Barka and other wilayats’’, representative of a quarantine centre said.

A star hotel quarantine offer is 7 nights special deal rate for a double room is available for RO 45 net per day including continental breakfast. On the other hand, a full board double room which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner is sold at RO 55 net per day without PCR service whereas an average hotel apartment is available at RO 20 per day including airport transfer and PCR service.

“We are able to offer this package of RO 20 per day because we have a deal with a hospital where we send our passengers for test and in turn, the hospital would send their hotel bookings to us’’, manager of a hotel apartment said.

Some of the hoteliers admitted that the institutional quarantine is giving them 100 per cent occupancy and they are able to swim through the huge losses incurred during the closure of hotels last year.

“We have been badly hit as events were stopped and our halls remained empty besides low hotel bookings. However, the new rule is fetching us good business as we are able to offer RO 25 per single occupancy and 30 for double occupancy for both Saudi transit passengers and expatriates living in Oman’’, operations manager of another hotel said.

The Supreme Committee decided on 7-day mandatory institutional quarantine for all arrivals in Oman through land, sea and airports at the visitors’ expenses after it was found that many failed to comply with home quarantine measures approved by the Supreme Committee.