I was there briefly in 2019. Sultan Qaboos was still alive then. I believe his cousin is running the place now. It’s rule by one man for all that might imply for policy stability. You don’t even have a federal council like the UAE. That said, policy has seemed fairly stable.
The fines for insufficiently washed cars were a thing back then. It was approximately $10 USD. There is also a regulation about each house having a wooden screen of certain dimensions built around its air conditioning unit.
Internet is restricted. For social media, WhatsApp works but Line is blocked. Pornographic websites are supposedly blocked, though I didn’t try them myself. Omani customs will sometimes seize and search removable media for pornography. They don’t particularly like it if you forget you have a copy of a Salman Rushdie novel in your bag.
The currency was very strong and prices were lower than Dubai but still expensive compared to most other places. Everything outside of the hypermarkets and western chains seems to be negotiable. It reminded me of Dubai of about 20 years ago in how things are starting to develop.
Everything shuts down every day between noon and 4pm or so. They import a lot of Indians for labor. Most of the taxi drivers are locals. There is an effort to generate more employment for locals, albeit in white collar and more prestigious jobs. Everyone speaks English. Often gulf arabs will speak English to each other, presumably to get around dialect differences, so it’s not uncommon to walk through one of the malls and pass by a group of arabs speaking English to each other.
Qatar has flights to Muscat from Doha. Muscat is not an airport hub. Like most of the GCC, you’ll be catching flights out at 2 am to go to one of the UAE airport hubs. Taxis are the usual fare for the GCC and there is a bus network called the Baisa bus. I did not try ridesharing there.
There were at the time only four places that served alcohol in all of Muscat and they were all hotel bars. The Grand Millennium doesn’t have one to my knowledge but the Hilton next door has a rooftop bar. Oman attracts a certain type of adventure travel hipster who likes to rent 4x4s and drive through the desert. They generally smell horrible.
I didn’t stay long enough to investigate
tax residency or the environment for
offshore business and so am reliant on the internet or second hand reporting there. It seems like a solid real estate investment if that’s your thing. Oil and gas services hold opportunity but operations are all partnered with PDO and they prefer big companies like Occidental. Gold, silver, perfumes, and incense are plentiful and can probably be obtained reasonably if you want to get into exporting. The Muscat stock exchange is small and had only about one hundred listed companies at the time. I’d be hesitant about running any crypto operation from there due to the internet restrictions, though that might not be a problem.
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