Disclosure

How this site makes money

Short version: some outbound links are affiliate links. If you book through one, the platform pays us a commission out of its own margin. You pay exactly the same price you would have paid otherwise.

Which links

Links to flight search, hotels, airport transfers, eSIMs, travel insurance and tours are generally affiliate links, placed through Travelpayouts. Every one of them is marked rel="sponsored" in the page source, and opens in a new tab.

Links to official processes are not affiliate links and never will be. That includes Nusuk for your Umrah permit and the Haramain rail site for train tickets. Nobody pays us for those, and you should be suspicious of any site that implies otherwise about a government service.

What it costs you

Nothing. Affiliate commission comes out of the platform's own margin, not out of an increased price to you. Booking through a link here and booking by typing the address yourself produce identical charges.

The conflict of interest, stated plainly

Hotel commission is a percentage of what you spend. That means we earn more when you book a more expensive room, and it would be dishonest to pretend that incentive is not there. What we have done about it:

  • The Makkah hotel guide sorts by walking distance to the Haram, not by price or by commission.
  • The cost calculator defaults to two sharing a room, which is the cheaper option.
  • Where the honest answer is "the cheaper tier is fine", we write that — in Madinah, paying premium buys a view, not access.
  • When the best option for a budget is not bookable through our partners, we say so and point you elsewhere.

If you ever find a recommendation here that only makes sense as a way to earn commission, that is a bug. Tell us and we will fix it.

Tracking

Affiliate links carry a tag identifying which page sent you, so we know which guides are useful. It does not identify you personally. The partner platform sets its own cookies once you arrive, under its own privacy policy.

Cookies and consent

Two optional things get stored in your browser, and nothing else:

  • Analytics — Google Analytics, so we can see which guides people actually read. Aggregate counts only; we never see who you are.
  • Affiliate attribution — Travelpayouts, which records that a booking came from this site so the commission is credited here. This is the one that pays for the site.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, neither runs until you say yes — you get asked on your first visit and nothing is stored before you answer. Decline and the guides, the calculator and every link work exactly as they do now. The only difference is that we stop earning on your bookings, which is our problem and not yours.

You can change your mind whenever you like:

The deal

You get guides with no ads, no email gate, no package being sold to you, and no sales call. We get a commission if the guide was good enough that you booked through it. If it was not good enough, we do not — which is the correct incentive for a site like this to have.