How expensive is Oman to travel to? Budget for a trip to Oman

Hey guys, in this post, I wanted to share with you my experience in Oman and tell you how expensive is Oman to travel to, what are the prices in Oman and what’s the overall optimal budget for a trip to Oman.

Is Oman a luxury destination or you could totally do Oman on a budget? Read this post to find out about the cost of travel to Oman!

As for 21.05.2019 1 OMR equals £2.04, 2.33 EUR and $2.6.

Our trip to Oman: 4 days in April

We spent 4 nights in Oman in April while exploring the country by car and trying everything it has to offer. If you’re interested in reading more about our itinerary for Oman as well as where we stayed / what we did, head to this post, where I will tell you everything in detail! >>>

Without further ado, let’s get started with the prices in Oman!

How expensive is Oman for travel? Oman travel budget

I will divide this post into 5 categories and then I will tell you how much did we spend during our trip to Oman, so you can see for yourself, how much realistically you can spend on your vacations in Oman.

Transport prices in Oman: cost of renting a car in Oman and more

Flight prices to Oman

Even though there are direct flights to Oman from the UK and some cities in Europe (check the price and availability here), Oman was part of our 9-day Middle-Eastern trip, so we flew there from Lebanon through Qatar with Qatar Airways. However, currently, you can get flights from the UK for £430 (direct flights) – check the prices here. You can fly cheaper if you fly with Pegasus through Istanbul, but the price difference is minimal, and the comfort difference is colossal.

Transport prices in Oman: renting a car in Oman

One of the most essential spending categories in Oman is the transport prices that include taxis, the cost of renting a car in Oman and overall all the public transport costs. Depending on the style of your trip, you will either need or don’t need a rental car in Oman.

When you don’t need a rental car in Oman:

You’re staying in one resort and you don’t plan on driving around. If you want to see something, you will take tours offered at your hotel or online.

When you need to rent a car in Oman:

in any other situations (unless you’re taking multiple tours, but we get to it later).

It’s not very expensive to rent a car in Oman, however, that also depends on the vehicle. If you want to go to Jebel Shams or Wahiba sands, you’ll need an SUV. We paid £270 for 3 days, including full insurance from Rentalcars.com. However, if you’re okay with a sedan, you can expect to pay about £110 for 3 days depending on the agency. I advise you to rent only from big international companies like Avis or Europcar in Oman, as they provide the best roadside assistance. Getting a flat tire in Oman is super common.

Public transport in Oman

Public transport in Oman is not very developed. Only once I’ve seen a public bus on the streets on Muscat and very few routes are covered. However, you can take a taxi everywhere. There are two apps you can download and use in Oman – that’s Marhaba Taxi and OTaxi. The first one is 3x more expensive than OTaxi but has more cars and services bigger areas. Taxi is not cheap in Oman – airport taxis use a meter and for a 10-minute ride, we paid around 6 OMR (that’s around £12). If your hotel is further away, you can pay 15 OMR and even more.

If you’re staying in a hotel that is very far away, e.g. Shangri La, it makes sense to order a transfer beforehand.

Do you enjoy travelling to the Middle East & Africa? Check my post about travelling to Egypt – whether it’s safe or not to travel to Egypt now >>>

Accommodation prices in Oman

Oman doesn’t have a golden mean when it comes to accommodation prices. Hotels are either affordable or very expensive. Resorts are costly, as you can imagine. The entire trip to Oman was like a roller coaster for us. We stayed 2 nights in some very affordable hotels, 1 night in a more expensive one and one night in a hotel, where we paid over £300 for a night (and that was a resort).

Although Oman has a huge coast, there are very few resorts in the country. The most affordable resorts are located in Salalah, however, you need to fly there. If you’re planning to go to Oman for a beach holiday, it might make sense to check the prices of the packaged holidays, as they can be cheaper than booking a hotel through Booking.com, for example. Check the prices of packages to Oman here.

If you decide to travel in Oman without an agency, you can stay in Muscat in a beautiful 4-star hotel like Centara (we stayed there for 1 night and loved it) for about £50-60 per night. If you want to stay in a resort, Shangri La is really one of the most affordable options – it starts from £250 per night. There are really no cheaper resorts near Muscat at the moment.

[vc_message style=”round” message_box_color=”success” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-check”]If you’re interested, what gear do I use to take photos, I have Sony A7 III with Samyang 35 mm prime lens. [/vc_message]

Food prices in Oman (restaurants and cafes)

In one trip, we went to Lebanon, Qatar, Oman and Jordan and Oman happened to be the most affordable destination in terms of food. As we were busy driving every day, we never had a proper lunch – we were just buying some snacks in the supermarket and never paid more than 3-5 OMR (usually it was 1-2 OMR).

However, we did have dinners in restaurants. In one of the best restaurants in Muscat, Kargeen, we paid around 20 OMR for a fantastic dinner. The mains were ranging from 5 to 7 OMR and were so huge that I would recommend asking 1 main for 3 people. A cheaper restaurant would be way less expensive than that, though. On the last night, we had a meal in a cafe called Arora and we paid 5.5 OMR for 2 shawarmas, 1 bread (it was like a pizza) and 2 freshly squeezed mango smoothies.

What is more expensive, however, are dinners at the hotels. Restaurants at the hotels are usually very overpriced – we went to a restaurant in Crowne Plaza and a soup was roughly 7-8 OMR. In Shangri La, we also had dinner and paid 42 OMR in total.

If you want to stay in Oman on a budget, choose local restaurants rather than restaurants in international hotel chains – you can save a lot of money and spend about 3-4 OMR per person for dinner or even less.

Tour and sightseeing prices in Oman

If you can sleep and eat on a budget in Oman, getting low tour prices would be way more complicated. Tours in Oman are expensive. That’s why we decided to rent a car and explore everything on our own. It wasn’t complicated at all. However, if you feel like you aren’t ready to drive in Oman or you wouldn’t want to spend your holiday driving around, you can look at some Oman tours:

A day-tour visiting Jebel Shams – private tour, around £135 pp
Wadi Shab tour – £140 pp
Nizwa Tour –£70 pp

The prices vary depending on the size of the group. The most expensive tours in Oman are, of course, the private ones.

Nightlife in Oman

Oman is a strict Muslim country and the nightlife in Oman is pretty much nonexistent. You can find alcohol in some of the hotel restaurants, but it will be expensive. If you want to read more about nightlife, you can check this guide by Rough Guides.

Our budget for a trip to Oman

If you’re wondering, how much did we spend in Oman, no worries, I’ll tell you now. I believe in sharing travel budgets, as you can realistically see, how much other people spent there. Of course, everyone’s needs and wants are different and so are our budgets, but it’s still useful to see, how much money to save for the trip.

Read my post about our budget for Japan as well here >>>

Since we didn’t fly to Oman directly from the UK (it was part of our Middle-Eastern trip), we only spent about £440 for two for a multi-city flight from Beirut to Muscat and back to Amman in Jordan, all via Doha with Qatar airlines.

Read the post about our Middle-Eastern trip itinerary and experience here >>>

How much did we spend in Oman?

Hotels: we stayed 4 nights in Oman and spent £460 on hotels – that included two nights in 3-4 hotels in Muscat (Centara and A’Sinamar next to the airport), 1 night in a traditional hotel in Nizwa (it was pretty unique – Nizwa Heritage Inn) and 1 night in a resort near Muscat – Shangri La. We used our discount with Expedia and Booking.com and also got cashback with Quidco (Expedia currently offers 10 to 12% cashback on hotels).

Transport: we rented a car for £270 for 3 days with rentalcars.com and paid around £25 in total for taxis on the last day. We also use Quidco for cashback with rental cars and the rate is approximately 10%. The gas is ridiculously cheap in Oman – we filled the 90-litre tank of our car 2 times and spent around £60 in total.

Food: all the breakfasts were included and we didn’t have any lunches (bought snacks in the supermarkets), so we only had 4 dinners. For snacks, we spent around £20 and dinners were around £160 for two in total, which is honestly quite affordable.

Sightseeing – we spent around £12 for entrance to Nizwa Fort.

In total, we spent around £960 pounds for two for a 4-day holiday in Oman excluding flights. I felt like we weren’t saving money and it’s definitely possible to reduce the cost at least twice by not staying in Shangri-La and renting a sedan instead of SUV.

Hope you found this post about prices in Oman and Oman travel budget useful. Should you have any questions about the cost of travel in Oman, don’t hesitate to ask!