'Potential to grow tourism from India and Russia to Oman'

Muscat: Grand Hyatt Muscat’s new General Manager, who will take up the role from March 28, has said that there is greater tourism potential from India and Russia to Oman.

“I have worked in Delhi for a while and there is great exposure to Muscat and Oman in India, that’s a potential growth area for us. Also the Russian market, I believe there is a great potential there as well,” said Paul Murphy, the new GM of Grand Hyatt Muscat.

Australian born Murphy, in 2011 became Resident Manager of Hyatt Regency in Delhi, where he spent 18 months, before being assigned to rebrand and launch the five Hyatt hotels in India.

In September 2013, he became General Manager of Hyatt Regency Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.

“Oman is often described as ‘The Pearl of Arabia’, and Grand Hyatt Muscat has an incredible reputation for the level of service and care that its colleagues offer the hotel’s many local and international guests. I look forward to working with the entire team in this beautiful hotel and location.”

According to him, Oman is a select destination and supply in the city is growing.

“There is obviously strong interest in the segment in the destination and I think Oman has really made itself strategically very different to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It’s much more centralized and focus driven in regards to their market, and their tourist brand so we have to work with that as well this is not a high volume destination, it a select destination.”

About the current economic position and challenges he said, “The leisure industry is challenging all over the world but to me it’s all very simple and comes down to service, it has to be very personal. There are some wonderful hotels in this city and we need to make sure that our customers stay with us and new customers come to us as well.

“Our occupancy is very strong, obviously rates are under pressure all across the market whether it’s the business or leisure segment. In regards to the economy we have no control over that as but we have to be flexible, corporate accounts are being told to reduce costs and find savings and that comes down to us as well.

“So a lot of our regular and loyal customers come to us, we talk to them and we have to negotiate because we want to keep the business.”