Doors Are Finally Open to Westerners in Oman

They look quite elegant, the Omani men in their white dresses, dishdashas, with silver-hooked dagger sheaths at their waist belts.

In the oasis of Nazwa, 80 miles west of Muscat, they offer a visitor a cup of Arabic coffee according to traditional rules of hospitality. They want to know where the visitor is from and rapidly get involved in a lively discussion.

If it were not for the Japanese-made pickup trucks in the background, packed with vegetables and fruits, one could easily feel transported into a century-old Arab society.

Oman offers tourists more than bazaars. Portugese and Arabic forts dot the coastline, where more than 200 empty sand beaches are spread along a 1,200-mile coast.

One can also see forts on mountains or in valleys near oases in the back country, such as in Bahla and Jibrin.

When the Gulf of Oman is hot and humid, from April till November, tourists mainly from the Gulf countries flock to the southern region of Dhofar near the port city of Salalah, the “Garden of Eden in the Arabic peninsula.”

Citizens from the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council have been able to enter Oman without restrictions for several years. Now, under rules in force since January, most Westerners are able to receive a tourist visa.

Before, only a limited number of tour groups from the West were allowed in because a tourist infrastructure was underdeveloped, and the government wanted to protect its people from “cultural shock.”

“Oman is an unspoiled country, and we will do our best to keep it like this. That is why we are opening slowly,” said Fatik Bin Fahr, director-general of the tourism authority.

“Oman will not offer cheap tourism. We do not want backpack tourists who cannot behave and then create problems.”

Said his assistant, Mohammad Nur: “The hospitality of every nation has its natural limits.”

That’s the reason why the tourism authority plans to allow no more than 50,000 Western tourists per year to enter the country through 1995, he said.

Nur said that Oman is getting advice from the United Nations in order not to repeat mistakes made by countries such as Spain, where a tourism boom saw skyscrapers spring up along the coasts and millions of tourists each year erode national traditions.

According to official statistics, about 16,000 tourists visited Oman in 1988, and the figure for 1989 is expected to be a few hundred more. About 6,000 Westerners arrived during the winter of 1989-90, 2 1/2 times more than in the previous year.

The country was virtually closed to non-Arabs before 1970, when Sultan Qabus deposed his Muslim fundamentalist father and began a step-by-step modernization of the country.

Oman gained about $53 million from tourism in 1988, an important source of income that it hopes will expand, as crude-oil reserves may be depleted in 30 years. Now 90% of foreign-curency earnings are from oil exports.

Meanwhile, officials are coming up with ideas to attract more visitors. Foreigners are now allowed to take photographs of Sultan Qabus’s fairy-like palace and the adjacent restored old buildings inside Muscat’s defense wall. Security measures are relaxed.

But photographers who want a picture of the bazaar in Nazwa had better hurry. Most parts were being destroyed to clear space for a modern shopping center.