How to choose an Umrah agency

Is the agency registered?

In France, any agency selling travel must appear on the register of travel operators held by Atout France. Its number starts with IM and usually sits at the foot of its website or on the quote. Ask for it, and check it yourself.

Elsewhere the rules differ from one country to the next, and pilgrimage often runs through a national licence granted to organisers. In every case, a serious agency gives you its number without hesitating.

What does the package really cover?

The headline price rarely covers the same things from one agency to another. Have it broken down line by line: the flight and its stopovers, the visa, the hotel and where it sits in relation to the Haram, transfers on the ground, meals, and whether a guide travels with the group at all.

Two packages that look alike can differ entirely on those lines. Ask for the detail in writing rather than over the phone: you can only usefully compare what you can read again.

Is the hotel within walking distance of the Haram?

This is the costliest difference between two packages showing the same price. From some hotels you reach the Haram on foot in a few minutes. From others you need a shuttle, and the shuttle does not always come when you need it.

At prayer times and throughout Ramadan, traffic seizes up. A short drive then takes longer than walking, and a group that misses its shuttle waits for the next one. For an elderly pilgrim, that single question decides how many prayers he will manage on site.

Ask for the exact name of the hotel, not just its star rating or its district, and look it up on a map yourself. Then ask whether the shuttle is included in the price, how often it runs, and until what time in the evening.

How many pilgrims per guide?

This is the most revealing question, and it costs nothing to ask. A guide looking after forty people is not doing the same job as a guide looking after a hundred and twenty.

Ask for the size of the whole group as well. A large group split into smaller ones works perfectly well, provided each one genuinely has its own guide, and not merely on paper.

Which languages do the guides speak?

Many pilgrims speak neither Arabic nor English. Yet on the ground almost everything is settled in one of those two, from the hotel desk to the first aid post.

If you are travelling with an elderly relative, or if this applies to you, ask outright which languages the guides speak, and how many of them speak those languages.

How does the agency keep track of its group?

This is the question almost nobody asks, and the only one that will truly count the day someone can no longer find the group. A pilgrim can get lost simply by leaving the Haram through a different gate from the one he came in by.

Put three precise questions. How does the agency check that everyone is present before each move? What does it do when someone is missing? And how can a lost pilgrim make himself understood, and reach his guide, without speaking Arabic?

An agency that has thought about those three will answer without hesitating and describe its method. An agency that improvises will talk about common sense and experience. Those are qualities, but they are not a method.

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