How to choose an Umrah travel agency in Pakistan

The short answer. A Pakistani passport holder cannot lodge an Umrah visa alone; it has to go through an approved agency, so the agency is not a convenience, it is the route. Choose on four things: that it is a real registered company you can verify, the walking distance to the Haram at the hour you will walk it, who you can reach while you are there, and what the price leaves out. Price is the last question.

Umrah is not a small Hajj, and choosing an agency for it is not a small version of choosing a Hajj organiser. There is no quota, no seats to be allocated and no Hajj Group Organiser licence involved. What there is instead is a visa you cannot file yourself, and a very wide range in what "a package" means.

Why the agency is the route, not a convenience

Pakistan is not on Saudi Arabia's eVisa list. The Umrah visa is issued through a tour operator attested by Pakistan's Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Nusuk app will not accept an application from an individual Pakistani passport holder.

That has two consequences worth understanding before you compare anybody:

• You are choosing who files your visa, not just who books your hotel.
• An agency that is not attested cannot file it, whatever it tells you. It will be

passing your file to somebody who is, and you should know who.

We have written out where that wall sits, and what the file actually needs, in the Umrah visa from Pakistan.

The four things to choose on

1. A company you can verify

Umrah has no single licence number to check the way Hajj does, which is exactly why the ordinary company checks matter more.

• The registered company name, matching the bank account and the receipt.
• Registration with the Department of Tourist Services, which is what a travel

agency in Pakistan should hold.

• IATA accreditation, if the agency issues its own airline tickets.
• An office you can walk into, or a video call from inside it.

Ours, with the certificates photographed, are on the contact page. The step-by-step is in how to verify an Umrah travel agency.

2. The walking distance, at the hour you will walk it

This is the single largest difference between two Umrah packages and the one most often described vaguely.

Ask for the hotel by name. Then look at the map yourself, and think about the walk at two in the morning, in a crowd, with the people actually travelling with you. Five hundred metres is a different number with an elderly parent than it is alone.

"Near the Haram" and "walking distance" are not answers. A name is an answer.

3. Who answers while you are there

Umrah is mostly self-directed once you land, which is why this matters more than people expect. A flight is delayed, a room is wrong, somebody is ill, a passport is in the wrong bag.

Ask: is there a representative in Makkah, is there a number that is answered at night in Pakistan time, and is it a person or a switchboard. The answer separates agencies more than anything on their brochure.

4. What the price leaves out

Ask for the excluded list in writing. It is more useful than the included list and almost nobody asks for it. The usual omissions are internal transport, the trip between Makkah and Madinah, Ziyarat, some meals, and anything to do with changing dates later.

Two packages that differ by a large amount usually differ in the hotel distance, the room occupancy, whether the flight is direct, and which of those excluded items are actually included. Ask which, and the comparison becomes real. Ours are written out on each departure on the Umrah packages page.

Timing, which is part of the choice

One of the two mandatory vaccinations has a waiting period before travel. That is not an agency's fault and no agency can shorten it, but a good one raises it in the first conversation rather than the last. If the first thing somebody asks about is your budget and not your dates and your passport expiry, you are being sold to.

The quiet signals

• They ask about who is travelling before they quote: ages, mobility, children.
• They tell you something you did not want to hear.
• The money goes to the company's account, against a receipt.
• The written answer matches the spoken one. Ask for the inclusions in a

message and compare.

• They can name a family who travelled last month.

Questions we are asked

Is a cheap Umrah package always bad? No. It is cheap somewhere, and it is usually the distance or the room. Find out where and then decide. That is a legitimate trade for a young couple and the wrong one for a family with an elderly parent.

Can I book the hotel and flights myself and only buy the visa? Ask the agency directly; arrangements vary and so does what each one will file. What you cannot do is file the visa alone.

Does a bigger agency mean a safer Umrah? It means more capacity. It does not tell you who answers at two in the morning.

How far ahead should I book? Earlier for Ramadan and the school holidays, which are the two periods where waiting costs you the hotel distance rather than the money.

Where to start

Send us your dates, how many of you there are and the ages, and we will come back with what is available, what it includes, what it does not, and anything in your file that needs attention first. If the honest answer is that your dates are too tight for the vaccination rule, we will say so.