Tony Walsh is an Oman travel guide author, photographer and lots more – with forty years+ of travelling in the Arab world and thirty years of experience living and working in Arabia.
This is the longer version of the story behind my writings. If you want the short version, it’s here. If you want the books that made use of my experience, they’re here.
As a small business operator, working in the peninsula, I was hands-on in many areas (perhpas most), including dealing with officialdom – from the customs officers clearing 40ft shipping containers, who invarably wanted every last box out for inspection – while I didnt due to potential damage, and the impossibility of repacking a full containor – the officials invariably inspected each package diligantly; The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Mutawa) in Saudi Arabia when a retail store, unknowingly, infringed their edicts – through to the privilage of meeting with many of the most senior Omani government ministers appointed by Sultan Qaboos.
When travelling, I enjoy meeting people off the beaten track, an easy thing in the Arab world. So I learned stories of Bertram Thomas from the descendants of his guides in Mitan, at the time a few homes in the sands – and remarkably about the Omani viewpoint of the Battle of Bani bu Ali, 200 years ago, from a sheikh in that town.
Nowadays, the Arabian Gulf region is a winter holiday destination for many people; others come to work in the shards of glass that crowd Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain or Doha. In March 1986 I arrived in Muscat to manage a retail & import business – and stayed in the region for 30 years. I came with a retail background already in place, as General Manager with Gordon Scott – the independent, award-winning shoe and accessories retailer whose flagship store stood on New Bond Street, London, a few doors from Sotheby’s, with further stores across the Midlands and Southern England.
Retailing in the Gulf
However, seeking pastures new, I arrived in Oman and soon found myself at the start of a steep learning curve, adapting to a new multi-ethnic culture and business environment that was very different from England in the 1980s. I needed to change my work style and find ways to enable the business to succeed within the bureaucracy of the government while appealing to the mosaic of different expectations of the owners, staff and customers.
Just before I landed into Muscat, in 1986, the Omani rial was devalued against the dollar by ten percent. Within months, the government also set the price of an Omani barrel of oil at $8.20 – down from over $27 the previous year. The economy responded by contracting by more than twenty percent in twelve months. In Britain, a one percent contraction is a national crisis. In the Oman of 1986, that would have not been noticed, indeed welcomed.
The business I inherited was teetering. Oil companies had cut back on exploration to nothing, the government halted all capital spending, and other retailers cut prices to attract a money-conscious population. I decided to lift the business away from the fray – from one offering non-branded products – to a company with internationally famous brands. We became sole importer & distributor in the country for Lego, Mattel, Waddingtons and more.
I introduced a strange idea into the business – fixed prices. Like other businesses in Oman, it had operated on a negotiated retail price; the customers seemed to have as much say in our selling price as I did. This meant that our profits were in effect out of any real control, and forecasting was almost pointless. So that needed to change; we the retailer, set the price and the customer could buy with confidence that their price was the same for everyone – they didn’t need to haggle and my staff did not have unfair pressure on them. Some customers were genuinely offended; they looked at a discount as a normal, expected part of shopping. Several took the trouble to tell me how angry they were, face to face, at some length.
But our fixed price was needed so I could at least project profits. It also enabled us to set up shop-in-shop operations in other retailers – prices were the same everywhere. Importing stock by container load means that assured sales were needed, especially after I had dealt with the intense customs inspection undertaken at the port. Having our own mini-branches elsewhere gave us assured market penetration. To improve profit margins, we made use of China’s very low-cost manufacturing and had our own branded doll, Zara, made through a company based in Hong Kong, which also allowed us to increase our wholesale business. The owners of the business were then able to sell a 49% stake to a wealthy Sheikh from the UAE, we had firm foundations.
Foundation of a tour business
During this period, I constantly travelled through northern Oman for work. At weekends, it was exploration for exploration’s sake.
On one occasion, crossing from the coast over the Hajar mountains in my trusty Mazda 626 by unpaved track through Wadi Hawasanah, I descended down a steep hill – perhaps in England it would be called a mountain. Looking back I realised there was no way I could get back up. Forward was the only option – foot on the accelerator, my heart doing its best to assist the engine which was powering first and second gear through dry wadis; the car crunched over rocks for several kilometres before reaching safety. A garage inspection in the first town I reached revealed the sump bolt had been sheared clean off. A trail of oil drips must have led back to my poor choice.
That near disaster, of course, stuck in my mind – carefully planning routes, along with vehicles, became a foundation of my eventual tour business.
These early years of exploration also opened surprising doors. I obtained permission to enter Al Hazm Fort at a time when it housed a police station – the officer on duty becoming, briefly, an unlikely guide through one of Oman’s finest seventeenth-century castles. Oman has always rewarded interest with generosity.
Relocation to Saudi Arabia
In the late 1980s I moved to Saudi Arabia, and became retail and purchasing manager for the AlShaya BHS franchise. BHS was a well-known brand in Britain – but Saudi Arabia looks to its far west, often overlooking Britain – the brand name meant nothing to them. The franchise structure also meant customers were paying a substantial premium, compared to its British High Street price, for that unknown brand.
I needed the stores to compete not on brand recognition but on everything surrounding the product. Though the staff were unused to a Western retail concept, we upgraded store layout and product presentation, moving away from the typical indifferent ‘shadow’ style of retailing – where assistants trail customers with persistent pressure selling. Eventually, we achieved a less intrusive welcome and implemented a situational awareness service style. My hope was that the experience of shopping itself was upgraded.
To complement this environment, I curated a boutique range of products from British Home Stores’ vast range. Rather than importing deep inventory, I opted for a breadth of choice bought in small quantities. A customer buying clothing from us was genuinely unlikely to ever see another person wearing the same style. This scarcity also served a dual purpose: in addition to creating that exclusive item for the shopper, it importantly minimised the financial impact of any buying mistakes I made.
One final tweak enabled us to more than compete with other stores.
Saudi regulations at the time prohibited changing rooms in shops. Rather than treating this restriction as an obstacle, I introduced what was probably the first formal cash refund guarantee in Saudi retail. Customers could take items home, try them on in the privacy of their residences, and return non-intimate items that did not suit them – provided they were in their original condition – for a full cash refund, without argument. It was an operational pivot completely at odds with the prevailing regional retail culture, where credit notes or outright refusals were the standard response to returns. In a market where commercial transactions were strictly final, this policy operated like an open-handed gesture of Arab friendship transposed into our store – it treated our small pool of customers as people and established an immediate, durable trust.
On the morning of 2nd August 1990 I arrived at the Al Khobar store, and almost immediately took a call from the BHS franchising director in London. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, did I know? I didn’t. Al Khobar is not far from the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, probably 10 hours by tank.
I told the staff what had happened and made clear I was staying. When I asked who wanted to leave, nobody did. Several of them had come from countries that had armed insurrections – and they chose to remain. Business carried on – and the owners who were Kuwaiti arrived into Saudi they had become refugees. However, while remaining open through the invasion, the owners seemed to show no appreciation of any sort for us. I felt the time was right for a move into self-employment.
In BHS, one standout department was toiletries and cosmetics, with sales per sq meter many times greater than any other. I made that leap into self-employment, and on 23rd December 1991 did it in Oman, which I had enjoyed so much as my first work location in the Arab world – a Happy Christmas.
Doubling back to Oman
Perfume is serious business in Arabia. We imported all our products from England, including, as exclusive importers into Oman, Floris, Bronnley and more. The Palace in Muscat was a regular buyer for Sultan Qaboos. Palace delivery only, unfortunately, not personal visits by His Majesty.
Our regular customers came from as far as the UAE. One evening a group from Abu Dhabi, listening to me attempt Arabic with them, began smiling. “You speak like an Omani,” one of them said. Given that my ‘Arabic’ had become that blend of Arabic and Hindi that is probably unique to Muscat, I took it as a compliment.
Later, I also ran the Disney Corner franchise – a colourful, chaotic, and thoroughly enjoyable experience that operated until Disney’s Paris headquarters for the region decided, with the stroke of a pen, that franchising was not for them. Every Disney Corner in the Arab world closed. The oil price, meanwhile, continued its habit of making Omani economic life feel like a particularly unpredictable Disneyland ride. The very deep pocket of the AlShaya family BHS franchise had insulated me in Saudi from the realities of small, almost regular, market shocks.
As inbound tourism was, by now, a possibility with a tourist visa being made available by Oman’s government, I started testing the options. Tourism gave me a more challenging income source – but one with good potential and free from the vagaries of the oil price. The shops, fortunately, had capable staff, so I pressed ahead. Over a few years, this grew until, in December 2000, when we had 18 months’ worth of forward tour bookings through to early 2002, all three shops were closed.
Contracting with the USAF
My new tourism business looked very promising as 2001 started – however, nine months later, on 11th September 2001, bookings stopped. Clients who had already paid in full arrived. These included customers from a Norwegian banking group, some of whom wore small Scandinavian flag badges on their lapels. Their American fellow travellers, anxious about visiting a Muslim country, chose Canadian maple leaf pins instead. By the end of the trip, we had all plunged together into the crowds at a Bedu camel race in Ibri, northwest Oman, completely absorbed. Oman, won them over as it reliably does.
My own finances were rather less easily won over. However, my landlord generously agreed to defer rent. A kind friend offered work in the UAE. And then – the United States Air Force used their 1980 Facilities Access Agreement with Oman to set up in some depth in Oman. The agreement had been used almost before the ink was dry in Operation Eagle Claw – the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Iran (one can imagine the USA purpose of the Omani agreement was to obtain it as a forward base in the region for that operation).
USAF bases were established at Masirah Island and Seeb North as staging points for Operation Enduring Freedom (2001) operations in Afghanistan. The USAF needed construction and services work done. I drove the full day south to Masirah Island for a meeting with the contracts officer, drove back to Muscat, and received a phone call shortly afterwards: would I like to tender for a small infrastructure contract? I paused – not too long, but long enough to avoid looking desperate – and said yes. I started morphing again from retailer to tour operator, and now to construction contractor – Oman has a habit of reinventing you if you let it.
The USAF contracts specified exactly what their requirements were – their problem was simply that existing contractors weren’t delivering to specifications. I knew how Oman worked and had been a hands-on client when fitting out my own shops. I read the requirements carefully and delivered; the USAF had higher specifications than would normally be required in Oman. So we worked hard to ensure they were not only met, but if possible exceeded. Further tenders & contracts followed at Masirah and eventually also at Seeb North (part of the civilian airport for Muscat). We were paid – fortuitously – in cash on the day of completion. Suppliers and labour, who had extended me 100% credit, and on Masirah provided accommodation for staff I needed to use who came from Muscat, were in turn paid promptly, and my new business succeeded with positive cash-flow.
Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) continued their need for support in Oman, but by April 2003, the USAF flew off north and began using Iraqi bases, and my unlikely construction career ended as abruptly as it had begun.
I knew that if I continued in construction, payments from other potential clients were 60/90 days after completion, occasionally drifting off into never-never land. They didn’t fit with my needs. Tourism was recovering by then, and I returned to it with considerable gratitude to the US airborne cavalry who had rescued me.
Tourism on Land and Sea
Our cultural tours resumed and grew. We worked throughout Oman and into the wider region, and I occasionally sailed for a week or more on small expedition cruise ships – Noble Caledonia’s Island Sky among them – giving on-board lectures about the Gulf, its history, and its people.
What made the tours genuinely rewarding was the people who came on them and their interactions with Oman’s population. Among our clients were specialist study groups — visitors who came to Oman specifically to learn, often with expert knowledge in fields the country rewards: archaeology, geology, botany, Islamic architecture, and ancient trade routes. I, of course, hope they also learned from us.
On one occasion, I arranged a surprise visit to a performance at the Royal Opera House in Muscat – the building itself is remarkable, so even for a person who didn’t like the performance, I hoped it would be a good night out. The group did not have clothing for Muscat’s opera house. I lent ties to the men. We dusted down hiking boots. We were, I think, the most enthusiastic, if least formally attired, members of the audience in the building that evening.
I was also fortunate enough, on more than one occasion, to bring groups to meet senior figures in Omani public life. The photograph below was taken in the office of His Highness Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said, Deputy Prime Minister for the Council of Ministers — alongside the Minister of Religious Affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salmi. That they gave their time to a small group of curious foreign visitors said everything about the extraordinary hospitality that has always defined Oman at its best.
Blogging my way to becoming an author
Local reputation in a small market doesn’t travel far – certainly not into the distant countries our own clients were coming from – most were individuals booking directly with us – the rest from specialised travel companies. I needed some reputation builders that could travel and reassure potential clients about who they were dealing with – especially as I required pre-payment on any tour. This was as we organised ourselves around all arrivals and turned down any that meant we were over-booked. For hotels we were the client, and they expected payment from us. So I needed to be assured that the money was in our bank so I could distribute all the payments, not only to hotels but to the local service providers who I also expected to be committed to us.
Therefore, I started a blog on my company website, about small everyday events we came across in Oman. It was poorly written; I wanted to simply get words out there. That was the start of this blog. I later added writing about Oman for foreign magazines, in-flight magazines, and newspapers.
The Ministry of Tourism also very generously fully funded my coffee-table book about Oman’s UNESCO sites – I was now also searchable on Amazon. Later, they asked me to write and provide photographs for 22 booklets on Oman’s governorates – 11 in Arabic and separately 11 in English.
Having left Oman in 2016 I re-wrote the Bradt Guide to Oman. The new 4th edition, published in December 2016, had all-new text and maps that brought the guide up-to-date.
In 2022 – I was delighted that my 5th edition rewrite of the Oman guide for Bradt was in shops. Again I revised much of the book, giving readers an up-to-date overview of the country. Accommodation that is off the radar for other visitors, and most residents, was written about to enable travel from the Yemen border in the south through to Khasab in the north, on the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not all 5 star offerings.
Oman has been the centre of my Arabian world, but Oman is part of the greater Middle East. I have travelled Saudi Arabia from Dumat Al Jandal in the far north down to Najran which Gaius Aelius Gallus the Roman general had temporarily captured on his march into Yemen; travelled through Syria, enjoying refreshments in a Damascus coffee shop, enjoying what amounted to a custom story that featured Sultan Qaboos – as the Hakawati had been told where I lived.
In Yemen itself, I enjoyed exploring the mudbrick town of Shibam with its 500-year-old layout; Iran, it was a pleasure visiting the Naqsh-e Jahan Square, the epicentre of the Safavid realms. However, it has been Egypt – which was my first Arab destination 40 years ago – that offers so much cultural interest, spread over millennia. I took, what seemed to be the first public bus between Aswan and Abu Simbel. Whatever the occasion, the villagers on the bus were celebrating & fed me their celebratory food en route. Each of those countries has added something to what I understand about the region – its history, its textures, its contradictions and its people.
Nearly a dozen books under my own name, and a nom de plume, I have now morphed into an author and a small publishing operation.
If you buy any of my books – thank you. I do hope that some of what I have learnt over 40 years of working and travelling through the Middle East – and distilled into these books, is of use to you.
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