Dubai Made $2.4 Billion Selling Duty Free at One Airport. Oman Just Took the Idea to 3 Desert Borders.

If you have ever driven between Muscat and Dubai, you know the Al Wajajah stop: passports, car insurance, and on Eid weekends a long queue of cars. A new decision now allows that stop to include a duty-free shop. Dubai turned duty free into a US$2.4 billion business inside an airport. Oman is trying the same idea on the roads its visitors actually use.

Key Takeaways

• Decision No. 145/2026 creates duty-free markets at three land crossings: Al Wajajah and Khatmat Malaha on the UAE border, and Rub' al Khali on the Saudi border.
• Dubai Duty Free sold AED 8.68 billion (US$2.378 billion) in 2025, and 90.6% of that came from passengers flying out.
• Oman's twist is that it is putting duty free on the roads. Emiratis were Oman's largest visitor group in the first half of 2026.
• What is still missing: no opening date, no named operator, no investment figure and no product list has been published.

What Oman actually decided

Lt Gen Hassan bin Mohsen Al Shuraiqi, Inspector General of Police and Customs, signed Decision No. 145/2026 on 11 October 2026. Its first article is a single line: duty-free markets are established at the Al Wajajah, Khatmat Malaha and Rub' al Khali land ports. It was published in Official Gazette issue 1670 on 18 October and took effect on the day it was issued, according to the decision text on Qanoon.om.

When the Royal Oman Police announced the decision on 13 October, it said the markets would sell goods at competitive prices, exempt from customs duties and taxes, subject to the applicable regulations. The stated aims were to boost trade at the land ports and to support tourism and logistics, Muscat Daily reported.

How Dubai built the original

Dubai Duty Free is the benchmark the whole region measures itself against. In 2025 it recorded sales of AED 8.68 billion, up 9.85% on 2024 and the best year in its history, according to the Dubai Media Office. That came from more than 21 million transactions, about 58,212 a day.

The key detail is who buys. Departures made up AED 7.864 billion, or 90.6% of sales. The top sellers were perfume, liquor, gold, tobacco and sweets. Dubai's model depends on millions of people connecting through one of the world's busiest airports.

Oman's twist: the road, not the runway

Oman's visitors arrive differently. Emiratis were the largest group of international visitors in the first half of 2026, with 491,503 arrivals, ahead of India on 382,015, according to NCSI data reported by the Oman Observer. Many of them come by car through crossings like Al Wajajah and Khatmat Malaha.

The Saudi route is newer but growing. From 2021 to the end of 2025, the Rub' al Khali crossing handled 640,260 Omanis, 135,902 Saudi citizens and 744,262 other travellers. That is about 1.5 million people in total, according to figures from Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Oman reported by Muscat Daily. Notice who is crossing the most: Omanis themselves. That fits a wider pattern our look at Oman's record tourism season found, where most visitors were Omani.

Oman is not the only Gulf state looking at the road. In January 2023, Saudi Arabia's tax and customs authority set out rules allowing duty-free markets at air, sea and land ports "when necessary", Asharq Al-Awsat reported. Oman has now named actual locations, though it has not yet opened any of them.

Who is building it, and what is still missing

Customs in Oman sits under the Royal Oman Police, so the Inspector General signed the decision. Its legal basis is the GCC Unified Customs Law, issued by Royal Decree 67/2003, and it was approved by the Ministry of Finance. So the legal groundwork is done.

Everything else is still blank. The operator, the investment, the opening date, the product range and the number of jobs were not publicly specified when this article was written. Nor is it clear whether only people leaving Oman can shop, or arriving travellers too.

The savings will depend on which taxes are actually waived. For context, Oman charges 5% VAT on most goods and a 100% excise tax on tobacco, energy drinks and vaping products, according to the Oman Tax Authority. How much of that a border shopper would save has not been spelled out.

Why this matters for ordinary Omanis

Dubai built its duty-free empire around people passing through. Oman is building its version where its own families and Gulf neighbours already travel: on the road to Hatta, the Batinah coast route at Shinas and the desert crossing to Saudi Arabia. That puts new business at border posts far from Muscat, which is where Vision 2040 says growth should spread. Our tracker of which governorates are getting development money follows that question.

Be honest about the gap, though. Dubai has decades of trading and billions in sales. Oman has one line in the Official Gazette. A shop at a border post will not change prices in Muscat, and Dubai will stay cheaper for some shopping and pricier for most living, as our Dubai versus Muscat cost comparison showed. The real test is simple: when the first shop opens, and whether the people working the tills are Omanis from the towns next to the border.