AccorHotels Group signed a management agreement with the Oman Tourism Development Company to open Oman's first ibis Styles hotel.
The 280-room ibis Styles Muscat will be developed in the Oman Convention & Exhibition Center development in Madinat Al Irfan. The hotel will be near the new Muscat International Airport, along with the city's leisure and business districts. The property, which is opening in 2020, is set to be the first internationally branded economy hotel in the OCEC.
The OCEC developed by Omran is the sultanate's largest and only development specifically for meetings, conferences, incentives and exhibitions. The development was part of the first phase of the Madinat Al Irfan project in Muscat.
"This partnership with AccorHotels to introduce ibis Styles to the Sultanate of Oman remains in line with out wider strategy to grow and fully develop the tourism and travel sector in the country. The Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre is positioning Muscat as a leading business tourism destination in the Middle East, opening the doors to travelers, who have not had Muscat on their destination list before. This will contribute to Oman’s overall economic growth through increased visitor spend and new job opportunities," Peter Walichnowski, CEO of Omran, said in a statement.
The new hotel will be Accor's 16th ibis Styles in the Middle East and Africa. The company has several more in the pipeline for the region. Recent additions to the portfolio include the ibis Styles Manama Diplomatic Area in Bahrain and the ibis Styles Makkah in Saudi Arabia.
Accor also has more than 300 hotels with 80,000 guestrooms across 30 countries in the Middle East and Africa, eight of which are operating and in the pipeline in Oman.