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In May 2021, HalalBooking, the world’s leading accommodation booking platform for halal-friendly travel, recorded sales of 4.4 million USD. This was an increase from the 3.5 million USD in the same month in 2019, prior to the strike of the coronavirus pandemic.
This increase represents an astonishing recovery for the company, especially in the 2nd half of the month. HalalBooking, is now on track to be back to its pre-Covid 2.0x growth rate and are forecasting sales of 60 million USD in 2021, in comparison to the 32 million USD in 2019.
Aside from the increase in sales across the month, 31st May 2021, was the single most successful day for sales in the company’s entire history with more than 500,000 USD of sales in a single day. However, the company forecasts that this record will be beaten many times during the coming weeks.
Elnur Seyidli, HalalBooking’s CEO said, “I always believed that we would bounce back relatively quickly, based on our exponential 2.0x growth trajectory up to March 2020. All the hard work of the last 15 months is now paying off. We used the period of the coronavirus pandemic wisely, to develop new website functionalities which our existing and new customers can now benefit from.”
Additionally, Seyidli also mentioned “we have also continued our customer acquisition program generating tens of thousands of new leads who have now started to book for the first time with us. As part of the current Series B campaign, we have raised 5 million USD in March and we are in negotiations with venture capitalists for a further 15 million USD.”
HalalBooking has also been developing an important program to increase its portfolio of worldwide properties, with halal-friendly features configured, so that customers can use this data to search and book. In relation to this, the Chief Operating Officer, Enver Cebi explained, ““Over the past year, our team has been extremely busy scaling up the system to add properties to our portfolio. We now feature around 250,000 properties worldwide on HalalBooking.com. Our program of expansion is still continuing we will shortly feature over 300,000 properties in over 65 countries.”
During the interview, Ufuk Seçgin, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, explained how the company has been able to achieve such impressive results. He believes that it all comes down to the customer trust in the brand and the value HalalBooking places on customer service. He stated that, “many of our customers were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, however, we treated them well, providing refunds as fast as possible, offering them attractive alternative options and allowing them flexibility with their holiday arrangements, and we can now see that this approach has paid off as it has allowed us to retain our existing customers and also to attract new customers, often through word of mouth.”
Additionally, HalalBooking has also developed campaigns such as ‘book with confidence’ which allows customers quibble-free cancellation in certain circumstances, such as when the test positive for Covid-19, have their flight cancelled or when increased travel restrictions are put in place. Many customers are also benefiting from initiatives such as flexible bookings with zero or low deposit.
Ufuk Seçgin, also said: “Following such a successful month in May and a phenomenal start into June, we expect to see our sales continue to grow, with the fast roll-out of vaccination programs, not just in European source countries but also in key destinations such as Turkey and Morocco.” He added: “It is a shame that the UK government has not shown more commitment to the travel industry as this is one of the few European markets where sales have yet to bounce back.”
Originally published on: https://www.travelandtourworld.com/
Featured image credits: Fabio Comparelli
