Muscat Hills Resort in Muscat

The location is stunning, on a beautiful sheltered cove with views of rugged mountains. The common facilities (dining, outdoor lounging, outdoor pool, activity offers) are relatively new and very nice, in bizarre contrast to the (very poor) rooms. If we were only to rate the rooms, I would give it a 1 or 2 rating, but the location if gorgeous and common facilities are nice. The rooms are really awful and simply bizarre compared to the newer common areas. The location on the beach and "casual" feel of the area is what attracted us to book and loved the look (online) of the outdoor bathrooms. We travel extensively in Southern Africa and are used to and love accommodation in nature areas with outdoor bathrooms/showers, etc. Muscat Hills totally misses the call with the rooms. The materials are "natural" but dusty and filthy dirty. The furnishings in our room were certainly not "Omani" as claimed. Not all the electrical outlets worked. The hairdryer or the outlet I plugged into blew up my electrical adapter. Once this happened my husband when to the reception to get a new hairdryer, since it didn't work, but the office was locked up. I tried to call the number given to us but with no answer. The toilet base was not secured to the floor and the hanging towel rail, with towels on it, draped on our heads when we sat on the unsecured loo. The lighting in the rooms and bathroom is minimal and rooms are extremely small. Sticker shock (besides the overpriced room for what it is): alcohol was not served in the restaurant or beach area until 8:00pm so we had 2 beers and 1 individual (small) bottle of wine from the room frig. Cost: over $50.00. There may have been a price list somewhere in the room to indicate to overpriced bar goods, but it either wasn't there or we couldn't see it with the poor lighting. Muscat Hills could be a fabulous resort if the existing rooms were bulldozed and built new.