There is a craze all over the Omani Internet about the British people pissed mad about their canceled Oman Christmas holiday. The biggest story was published on the Daily Telegraph and the blog of one of its writers. In short, the GCC Summit is happening in Oman this year, it was supposed to be held in November, but it got rescheduled last week so now it will be held on the last week of December. The plan was to have it in Al Bustan Palace, but apparently its renovation is still not finished, so the Diwan issued an order to take over every single room in the top six hotels in town during the last week of December – and this practically meant that everyone who made a booking to spend the Christmas holiday in Oman had those plans screwed.

Apparently, a lot of British people had their holiday plans arranged to come to Oman, after all, Vogue UK did select Oman as the number 1 destination for 2008. Travel agencies and individuals are not happy about it at all. For many it will be a big hassle to change their holiday plans, but for those who have made their hotel and airplane tickets independently will most probably not be able to change their flight plans without a penalty.

Regardless of the reasons behind the change of plans at this stage, the government is supposed to be taking tourism as a serious industry and as one of the main targets for diversifying the economy pillars, what is happening is a mess, it is seriously bad PR for Oman, and will, to some extent, harm our tourism industry.

I think that the Government should make an apology to the affected individuals AND offer them a free stay in whatever hotel they had their original booking at the same number of days they were supposed to stay for next year. I don’t think that it will hurt the Diwan’s pocket at all, but at the same time I know that this will never happen because we do not have a culture of consumer compensation or consumer protection.