Omani Tourism: AL Hamra

No train at AL Hoota Cave derails tourism

One of the main tourist site in Sultanate of Oman and attracts a lot of tourists to experience the mysterious beauty of nature is AL Hoota Cave. It is located in AL Hamra in AL Dakhlia Governorate and in among a must visit site among tourists. It has a small museum, administrative offices and a small hall to show documentary films. Also, one of its attractions is a train, which is the only one in Oman. The train is used to take tourists from the reception to the mouth of the Cave.

 The train at the cave boosted the tourism. It attracts a lot of visitors especially Omanis. Visitors have to pay 3 OR if they are Omanis and 5 OR if they are foreigners. But recently this great attraction is facing a big problem, it has some technical issues.

This problem occurred during the first year of Cave's operation and the reason was of poor maintenance of the train. Now, the visitors have to walk across the rough road until they reach the entrance of the cave. Most of them complain when they notice that the train is under maintenance for a long time.

 The problem is there for the later 3 years. Why did that happen? Why there was no guarantee to fix the train if any damage happened?  This train cost around 8,000 OR. The solution for this problem was to replace the faulty with a new one. What are your comments on this subject? Do you have any suggestions to improve this situation?