Oman: A total of 39,944 Omani nationals applied for Schengen visas in 2018.
Five EU embassies issued the visas to the Omani citizens who wished to travel to one of the 26 EU member countries.
The embassies of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain received 38,944 applications and granted 36,460 Schengen visas throughout the whole of last year.
The German Embassy was the busiest, processing 10,476 applications of Omanis who wished to travel to either Germany or Iceland.
The Netherlands Embassy received 9,322 applications from travellers wishing to visit the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Sweden or Switzerland.
The Spanish Embassy, which processes visas for Spain, Austria, Finland, Lithuania, Malta or Slovenia, followed with 8,419 and France with 8,081 applications received.
Most of the visas granted were multiple-entry, which means those who received them were permitted to enter the Schengen territory more than once with the same visa, as soon as the visa was still valid and had permitted days of stay left, the report said.
Of the overall visas granted, 72.2 per cent of them were multiple-entries, a slight drop compared to 74.2 per cent in 2017. It may be noted that in 2016, 82.9 per cent of the visas granted were multiple-entries.
According to the same report, the rate of visa denials for Omanis reached the highest in the last five years, with 4.9 per cent of all applications rejected compared to 2014 when only 0.8 per cent of 34,238 of applications were rejected.