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Muscat: The annual Salalah Tourism Festival, which is a major draw for Gulf tourists, began in Salalah with a ceremony encapsulating the vibrant culture and heritage of the sultanate.
A capacity turnout of around 6,000 people filled Al Murooj Theatre on the Salalah Plain on Tuesday night to enjoy folk dances, operettas and music.
Omani dance troupes in traditional costumes regaled the audience in a two-hour performance.
The six-week festival celebrates Salalah's unique khareef season, a sub-tropical climate characterised by light rain, mist, and balmy weather, the result of the southwest monsoon sweeping over a tiny sliver of the sultanate's southern coast.
For thousands of Gulf tourists seeking to escape sweltering summertime temperatures, Salalah's mist-shrouded, green-carpeted hills make for an attractive holiday setting.
Nearly half of the estimated 351,000 tourists who visited Salalah during last year's khareef, were from the Gulf. The UAE was the single largest contributor, with 72,000 tourists.
In keeping with the family-oriented flavour of the festival, this year's activities will echo a familiar theme: 'A Family Get-together'. Over the next six weeks, the focus will shift to the sprawling Municipality Recreation Centre, the traditional venue of the annual cultural festival.
To meet the projected growth in passenger traffic to Salalah, national carrier Oman Air has increased frequencies to the holiday hotspot to 325 flights during July and August.
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