As HalalBooking celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024, it announced a significant milestone – welcoming its 1 millionth member to the HalalBooking Loyalty Club (HBLC).
This achievement underscores the brand’s exceptional growth, especially considering the HBLC membership surged from under 100,000 in 2019 to a million in 2024. This growth trajectory reflects the increasing global interest in halal-friendly travel and HalalBooking’s commitment to catering to this niche market.
Elnur Seyidli, CEO of HalalBooking, shares his enthusiasm about reaching this milestone during a particularly thriving period for the company. “It’s thrilling to celebrate this achievement as we progress towards our unicorn ambition,” Seyidli remarks. HalalBooking has evolved into a global service provider, catering to travelers from 144 countries and offering accommodations in 91 destination countries, establishing itself as a unique and comprehensive platform for halal-conscious travelers.
In 2014, the brand launched with just over 100 hotels, all of which were in Türkiye. That year’s sales were just $2 million. Now, HalalBooking features around 500,000 hotels worldwide and in 2023 its customers booked stays in accommodations in 91 different countries across the world. In 2023, 32% of sales were for stays outside Türkiye, demonstrating huge progress towards its aim of becoming the platform of choice for halal-conscious travellers for all of their trips, by diversifying its offering. It has seen particularly encouraging growth in the last quarter of 2023 with sales to Saudi Arabia up 350%, to the USA up 300%, to the UAE up 120%, and to the Maldives up 60%.
Total sales in 2023 were $66 million representing almost 30% year-on-year growth. To put this into context, the UNWTO forecast was that overall tourism would have recovered to almost 90% of 2019 levels (pre-pandemic) by the end of 2023. HalalBooking by contrast, has more than doubled sales in the same period, from sales of $31 million in 2019. Nonetheless, 2023 sales were below the company’s target due to several external factors, including the aftermath of the two major earthquakes in Türkiye – still its most popular destination – in February 2023, as well as high inflation rates, the global cost of living crisis as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war and the pandemic, combined with the war on Palestine in the last quarter of the year. Despite this ongoing situation, the company is targeting sales of $100 million in 2024.
Seyidli continued: “We have several exciting projects in the pipeline for 2024, which will help us achieve our targets. At the end of Q1, we will launch our new app. We are also enhancing our price competitiveness even further by implementing more APIs with industry partners. At the same time, we are increasing our promotional spend in core markets and building on existing successful marketing partnerships with airlines, financial institutions, and influencers and expanding to new markets such as the GCC.”
Unique tech features of Halalbooking
HalalBooking continues to develop new tech functionalities. The most significant of these is the unique new Umrah features, introduced to serve an emerging sector for the company, that of pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah. HalalBooking is the only online platform in the world where users can search and filter results by these features. For example, to find accommodation with direct views of the Kaaba in Makkah – the site that Muslims face when they pray. They can also filter by walking distance to the Haram (the Great Mosque of Makkah or the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah) or by whether a hotel has a free shuttle service to it. In Madinah, they can also find out which direction their hotel is facing, which affects the view when praying.
Another functionality that HalalBooking launched recently enhances the room options offered to larger families. It was already the only online booking platform in the world, that was able to take information about the family and the ages of children and to calculate automatically how many and which type of rooms were required to fit the family precisely. Previously, the options offered would only include multi-rooms of the same room type. The improved functionality now offers the possibility of also combining different room types where this would be the best option, as well as providing information about possible connecting or adjacent rooms in any suggested multi-room option.
Series B investment round concluded at $8 million
The company’s Series B investment round was concluded in the last quarter of 2023, with an additional $1.5M at a company valuation of $102 million. This brought the total angel investment for the Series B round to a total of $8 million from over 40 angel investors. The company’s cap table remains 85% owned by its founders.
HalalBooking was ranked number 8 in “London’s Fastest Growing Businesses Index in 2023’ in the Fast Growth 50 Index. It has also been shortlisted for leading travel industry awards in the 2023 Skift IDEA Awards Change Makers category and the Travolution Awards. It is a shortlisted finalist in three categories at the Islam Channel Business Awards 2024, the UK’s largest awards celebrating the best of British Muslim businesses.
