Muscat – H H Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham al Said, Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth, inaugurated the national pavilion of Oman at the 59th Venice Biennale in Italy – one of the most prestigious art festivals in the world – on Thursday.

Coinciding with the biennale, the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism (MHT) launched a promotion campaign that will continue till November.

Launched with an aim of promoting Oman as a safe tourist destination in the Italian market, the campaign makes use of public transport buses, water taxis as well as major sites like Venice Marco Polo Airport, Santa Lucia railway station and the Ponte degli Scalzi bridge.

Asma al Hajariya, assistant director general of tourism promotion in MHT, informed that Italy is one of the biggest source markets, within Europe, for visitors to Oman. Around 726,000 European travellers visited the sultanate in 2019.