Muscat-The Salalah Tourism Festival (STF), held every year to coincide the khareef season, has been brought forward by a fortnight. The festival will now be held for 30 days from July 1 instead of usual 45 days.
Shaikh Salim Bin Aufait Al Shanfari, Chairman of the Dhofar Municipality and the Organising Committee for the STF, said in a statement to the Oman News Agency that the festival dates have been altered in view of the Holy Month of Ramadan.
The festival, Al Shanfari pointed out, serves tourism sectors, most notably hotels and hotel apartments. This year the STF will include activities ranging from cultural, economic, social, sports and religious.
The festival coincides with the Khareef (monsoon) season that attracts large numbers of tourists, who arrive in Dhofar to enjoy the pleasures of the cool weather that lasts till the end of September every year.
Salalah Tourism Festival is considered as one of the most important activities that support the tourism movement in the sultanate and the Governorate of Dhofar during the Khareef season. The festival has won wide acclaim for promoting family-centred tourism in the region.
Like Sohar and Muscat, the Dhofar region had also seen protests in the recent past, but barring one day, it has remained peaceful. However, with the STF fast approaching, the security agencies last week cleared the protest site outside the Governor's building and evacuated all the protesters staging sit-ins since last February.
