Noor Al-Haramain Travel was not built by a corporate travel group looking for a new market; it was built by a family who had a genuinely disappointing first Umrah experience and decided the industry needed an honest alternative. Everything below explains how that founding experience shaped the way we operate today, from accreditation to the way we price a package.
Why we exist
Our founders' first Umrah, arranged through a large operator in 2009, ended with a hotel forty minutes from the Haram, a transfer that never arrived, and no one to call when things went wrong. That gap between what was promised and what was delivered is the entire reason this agency was set up.
We deliberately kept the company smaller than the big-name operators so that every pilgrim who books with us deals with a real person who knows their file, rather than a call centre reading from a script.
Accreditation you can verify
We are ATOL protected under licence number 11842, IATA accredited for flight ticketing, and a member of ABTA. These are not marketing badges; they are the regulatory frameworks that protect your money if a flight is cancelled, a hotel booking falls through, or a business in the supply chain fails.
We are also registered on the Saudi Nusuk platform as an approved provider for Umrah visa processing, which allows us to submit and track applications directly rather than through an intermediary.
How we choose hotels and suppliers
Every hotel we contract with in Makkah and Madinah has been visited in person by someone from our team, who checks room cleanliness, genuine walking distance to the Haram, lift access for elderly pilgrims and how quickly the front desk responds to problems.
We contract directly with hotels rather than buying blocks of rooms through a third-party wholesaler, which keeps our pricing more transparent and gives us far more leverage if a room needs to be changed or upgraded on the ground.
Our office in Makkah
Unlike agencies that operate entirely from a UK call centre, we maintain a permanent office in Makkah staffed by coordinators who speak English and Arabic. When a pilgrim has an issue with a hotel room, a missed transfer, or simply needs directions to a pharmacy at midnight, there is someone minutes away rather than a time difference away.
This local presence is also how we keep our Ziyarat guides current and our transport partners reliable, because we can inspect and replace underperforming suppliers quickly.
The team behind your booking
Our UK-based consultants have each performed Umrah multiple times themselves, which means the advice you receive on ihram, packing, timing and budgeting comes from lived experience rather than a script written by someone who has never travelled.
Every booking is assigned a named coordinator who stays with your file from your first enquiry through to your return flight landing back in the UK, so you are never re-explaining your situation to a new person.
Pricing philosophy
We quote one all-inclusive price covering visa, flights, hotels, transfers and Ziyarat, and we do not add supplements once you have booked. If fuel surcharges or hotel rates genuinely change before you have paid your deposit, we tell you clearly rather than burying it in small print.
Where a cheaper alternative genuinely suits a pilgrim's needs better, our consultants recommend it even if it means a smaller commission for us, because repeat bookings and word-of-mouth referrals from the UK Muslim community matter more to us than a single transaction.
Community involvement
We work with mosques and Islamic centres across the UK to arrange group Umrah trips, often with a scholar or imam travelling as part of the group to provide ritual guidance in person. These group departures have become one of the most requested parts of our service, particularly during the summer holidays and Ramadan.
We also sponsor a small number of places each year for pilgrims who could not otherwise afford the trip, funded through the margin on our group packages rather than public donations.
