SALALAH TOURISM FESTIVAL
44 July 2019COVER STORY – HOSPITALITY
What are the hotels owned and
managed by Aitken Spence Resorts
Middle East in Oman?
Al Falaj Hotel is 100-per cent owned
and managed by Aitken Spence Resorts
(Middle East), which is headquartered
in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We have 23
hotels worldwide including in Sri
Lanka, Maldives, India and Oman. In
the Sultanate, we purchased Al Falaj
Hotel in 2016. In addition, we manage
Desert Night Camp in Al Wasil, Sur Plaza
Hotel in Sur and Al Wadi Hotel in Sohar.How has been 2019 for the properties
you manage in terms of occupancy?
In 2019, we have been doing well,
compared to 2018. The forward
bookings for the winter are looking
promising. If the trend continues, we
will be having a very good season ahead
in all segments.Recently there has been a marginal drop
in certain segments such as the corpo-
rate, but when you look at leisure, there
has been a significant increase in the
number of tourists arriving in Oman es-
pecially from Germany, Italy, France etc.We are witnessing a surge in the demand
for our Desert Night Camp in Al Wasil.
Just before one and a half years back,
we added 25 more rooms, catering to the
increasing demand. And every year our
occupancy rates are ranging from 80 to
90 per cent. Ours is a world renowned
facility and we are considered one of
the best desert resorts in the world.
Therefore, the demand is going up day
after day. Our guests coming to Muscat
go for a round trip covering Muscat, Sur
and Desert Night and come back for one
more night to Muscat.What are you doing to promote Oman
as a destination?
We, as a group, promote Oman
significantly in different markets.PROMOTING OMAN
Srinith De Silva, CEO of Aitken Spence Resorts-
Middle East, talks about the properties hiscompany owns and operates in Oman and
the efforts that go into promoting Oman
as a destination
We have a strong presence
internationally in leisure tourism,
especially in our capacity as a joint
owner of TUI, Germany. We also
promote via social media and conduct
new destination roadshows especially
in the emerging markets such as
China, Russia and Scandinavian
countries. We have marketing
representatives in these countries
and we cash in on this expertise to
promote Oman in all these countries.These campaigns have been very fruitful
and our numbers have gone up. We
are doing extremely well in the leisure
segment, despite a drop in the corporate
segment owing to the fall in oil prices.What are the key challenges facing
the industry?
Getting visa clearance for recruiting
skilled staff with professional qualifica-
tion and technical expertise in the vari-
ous hospitality services is one of the key
challenges we are confronting today. We
don’t have all these expertise available
in Oman. For example, at the Desert
Camp, when we opened a spa, we are
facing the shortage of trained therapists
specialised in professional massaging.However, we have a growing number
of Omani workforce cutting across
divisions and departments. We have
Omani employees from bellboys to
senior managers. We have Omanis
who scaled new heights in their
profession starting from the lower rung
of the ladder. We would send some
of them to Sri Lanka once in a year
for training. We have also introduced
various training programmes for them.
However, education needs to be more
industry-focussed enabling them to
offer more services.Please tell us about your future plans...
Currently Al Falaj hotel is going on a
complete renovation. The refurbished
property will be rebranded as Adaaran
Muscat, named after our Maldives brand.
The project is going on and we have
almost completed 50 per cent of the work.
The renovated and rebranded hotel will
be ready in a year’s time. We will be
refurbishing the entire property-all the
152 rooms, lobbies, pubs, conferences
halls, swimming pools etc.