8 Oman Tourism Projects Under Active Construction Right Now — And What Each One Is Actually Building

Oman signed 36 tourism deals in nine months last year. But deals are just paper. The real question most people ask is simpler: is anything actually being built? The answer, as of mid-2026, is yes, in at least eight places at once, stretching from the mountains of Ad-Dakhiliyah to the tip of the Musandam peninsula.

What Is Actually Being Built

Omran Group, the state-owned development vehicle that structures and co-finances most of these deals, currently has eight projects in its active pipeline. These are not MoU signings or feasibility studies. They are projects with signed usufruct contracts, confirmed financing, or construction already underway.

Project	Location	Status (mid-2026)	Investment
Club Med Musandam	Musandam	Construction starts 2026, opening 2028	90 million euros
The Sustainable City Yiti	Muscat	96% infrastructure complete	Not publicly specified
Nobu Hotel and Residences	Yiti, Muscat	Active development	Not publicly specified
Al Bustan ITC	Muscat	Signed March 2026, 200-room hotel	Not publicly specified
TUI Hotels Cluster	Dhofar	Signed September 2025, opening from 2028	Not publicly specified
Salalah Junuf ITC	Dhofar	Active, Phase 1 within 30 months of signing	RO 80 million
Santani Jabal Shams Resort	Ad-Dakhiliyah	Active development	Not publicly specified
Alie Nivas Musandam Resort	Musandam	Confirmed September 2025	Not publicly specified

The investment figures for several projects were not publicly specified at the time of writing. Where confirmed totals exist, they are cited above.

What It Means for Jobs, Not Just Tourists

Take Club Med Musandam as a concrete example. The project will employ around 1,000 workers during construction phases alone, according to the Omran-led consortium's disclosures. Once operational, the GCC's first Club Med resort creates a permanent hospitality workforce in Musandam, a governorate that has historically had limited private-sector employment beyond fishing.

The Salalah Junuf ITC in Dhofar adds a 124-room five-star hotel and a marina to a coastal stretch that currently has little formal infrastructure. For people in and around Salalah, that is not just a new place to take visitors. It is a new cluster of jobs in reception, food and beverage, maintenance, transport, and marine services.

Every project in this pipeline operates under Oman's usufruct system, where private developers build on state land under a long-term agreement. Crucially, Omanisation requirements are embedded directly into each management contract signed with international operators. So when Nobu or TUI or Club Med arrives, they are contractually obligated to hire and train Omani staff, not just import their own labor pools from abroad.

This is a real structural difference from how some regional peers have handled hospitality development. As we covered when looking at Oman's tourism deal momentum, the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism has been consistent about embedding labor conditions into the legal framework, not leaving them as voluntary targets.

Yiti: The Project That Changes Muscat's Edge

The Yiti development on the southeastern fringe of Muscat is the project most likely to affect ordinary Muscati residents in the near term. The Sustainable City component is 96 percent infrastructure-complete as of September 2025, meaning roads, utilities, and foundations are largely in the ground. The Nobu Hotel and Residences sits within the same master-planned zone.

For residents of Muscat's southern suburbs, Yiti is becoming a new coastal destination without requiring a long drive. For young Omanis looking for work in hospitality, it represents a cluster of openings at international branded properties within commuting distance of the capital.

Does This Scale Match the Vision

Oman's Vision 2040 target is 12 million inbound visitors per year. In Q1 2026, the Sultanate welcomed 1.04 million visitors, a 7 percent increase year-on-year according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information. At that pace, reaching 12 million annually by 2040 requires roughly doubling the current supply of beds, attractions, and transport links more than once over.

That context is why the pipeline matters. Eight projects across five governorates is not enough on its own. But combined with the 26 licensed integrated tourism complexes already in the system and RO 10.664 billion in total investment committed to existing and ongoing ITCs by end-2024, it shows a machine that is moving rather than stalling.

A comparison with the UAE is instructive but needs to be honest. Dubai built its hospitality sector largely through rapid permitting and a willingness to accept very high levels of imported labor. Oman is moving more slowly and insisting on Omanisation at each stage. That means slower room counts but more durable local employment. Whether that trade-off will be enough to hit 12 million visitors is an open question. The 2024-2025 Vision 2040 annual report tracks the delivery progress and gives a clearer picture of where the gaps are.

Who Is Paying for This and Who Is Responsible

Omran Group acts as the state anchor investor and deal structurer. It does not build hotels itself. Instead, it assembles the land rights, secures the usufruct contracts through the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, and then brings in private capital and international operators. The 90 million euro Club Med deal, for example, was financed through an Omran-led consortium, not from a single government budget line.

The Eleventh Five-Year Plan allocates RO 900 million annually to tourism investment across the Sultanate. That envelope covers both the public infrastructure that makes projects viable (roads, water, coastal access) and Omran's equity contributions to specific deals.

The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism handles licensing, operator requirements, and the usufruct system. Omanisation is enforced at the contract stage, not left to voluntary compliance.

Why This Matters for Ordinary Omanis

If you live near Musandam, Yiti, Salalah, or Jabal Shams, the answer is straightforward: construction jobs now and hospitality jobs from 2027 onward, with international brands that carry genuine demand.

If you are a young Omani anywhere in the country, these projects represent the clearest visible proof that the tourism career path is not theoretical. Club Med, TUI, Nobu, and the other brands entering Oman bring training programs and international career ladders that simply did not exist here five years ago.

If you are planning a holiday inside Oman, the pipeline explains why more options are coming, and why prices may eventually come down as supply increases beyond the current handful of premium resorts.

Eight projects in active development will not transform Oman's tourism sector overnight. But they are real, they are under contract, and several of them will open within two years. That is a materially different situation from where Oman stood at the start of Vision 2040. You can track how the broader delivery machine behind this is performing at Oman's Vision 2040 governance and project delivery tracker.