Oman - $162.31
We spent seven days in Oman and managed to average just $162.31 while we were there, way below our target daily budget! This makes Oman the second cheapest country we’ve been to, from a daily spend perspective, which was not what we expected at all when we first arrived. Our largest category of spending here was Lodging, though I’ll explain why that’s a bit misleading below. We also had to rent a car while in Oman, as it's the most efficient way to move around the country. We didn’t have any spending on Flights here, since we used AAdvantage miles to fly Etihad’s terrific Business Class to Oman from Indonesia. Our only other $0 spend category was Other Transportation, since we had our own car we didn’t have the need to take any taxis, buses, trains, or boats.
Lodging accounted for $72.66 of our daily spend, though this is misleading for a couple of reasons. The first is that we spent one night at the superb Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve Hotel which cost us $150 on its own, far above our daily average. However, by staying at the reserve itself instead of another cheaper, nearby hotel, we had both the evening and morning tour of the turtle beach included. These two tours would have cost us $125 in total had we not been staying here and, since the hotel also had free breakfast (which I value at $15) it was like the hotel cost us only $10 in the end. The second reason this number is misleading is that we used free night awards with Marriott Bonvoy to stay at the incredible Al Bustan Palace, a Ritz-Carlton Resort for our stay in Muscat. The executive suite we had can go for over $1,000 in the peak season but we paid $0.00 for our entire stay, including breakfast, valet parking, endless waters, and snorkeling gear for the reefs in front of the hotel.
Food was our second largest spending category, costing us about $34 per day, below what we had expected going into Oman. We found delicious food all over the country, and at any price point. For some meals we simply shared a cold mezze plate, while for others we ate a set menu at a traditional Omani restaurant. In both cases the food was very good, and I think if we had been trying to cut this cost down as much as possible we could have spent less than $20 per day and still been very happy.
As mentioned, it’s almost impossible to get around Oman without your own car, so a Rental Car & Gasoline was our third largest expense at about $32 per day. We rented a small sedan to get around, with our thinking being “we only needed to get from point A to point B, why get something larger when we don’t need it?” However, there are several areas in Oman, particularly in the mountains or the sand dunes, that are only accessible in a 4x4 vehicle, making it difficult to reach them on this trip. We would recommend that you book one of these larger vehicles to get the most out of Oman on your own trip. With petrol costing only $2.20 per gallon ($0.55 per liter) it doesn’t matter as much financially if you have to fill up more often, it won’t eat that much more out of your budget.
We spent about $11 per day on various Activities which mostly consisted of museums here. Many scenic spots or must-see destinations like old villages are free to enter, and when we did have to pay for an entrance ticket to a museum or park, the prices were very reasonable. We spent about $9 on Miscellaneous expenses, including our local eSim, some light laundry, and a small amount of cash (almost everything is paid for with credit card here). Finally, we spent $13 each on 10 day entry visas for Oman, but were told at the border we actually didn’t need one with US passports! The information can be a little bit conflicting online, and we had read on the U.S. State Department’s website that Americans needed to obtain a visa before going. We would recommend reaching out to your foreign office, or the Omani Department of Tourism before arriving to see what your Visa needs look like, as the online tools can be unclear.