What is included in a standard Hajj package?
The short answer. There is no standard package, and that is the useful thing to know. Nearly all of them include the visa and government charges, the Mina and Arafat camp, movement between the holy sites, the flights, and the Makkah and Madinah hotels. What varies is meals, the Qurbani, Ziyarat, laundry and airport transfers. What is in none of them is your own spending money, gifts, taxis and phone.
People ask this expecting a fixed list, as though "Hajj package" were a regulated product with a standard specification. It is not. Two packages at the same price can differ substantially, and the difference is rarely in the headline.
What is in nearly every package
The Hajj visa and the government charges that go with it.
The Mina and Arafat camp. Every package must include this because you cannot perform Hajj without it. What differs enormously is the category and where the camp sits, which is the single largest difference between two packages and the one least often asked about. The detail is in Mina camps during Hajj.
Muzdalifah, which is spent on the ground.
Movement between Makkah, Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah. Required, so included.
Flights, on the group's dates rather than yours.
Hotels in Makkah and Madinah, where the distance from the Haram is most of the price, and where the number of people in the room is why the same package has several prices.
What varies, and must be asked about
These are the lines that make two similar-looking quotes different:
- Meals. All, breakfast only, or none.
- The Qurbani. In some, not in others.
- Ziyarat, and whether transport to the sites is included. See
does a Hajj package include Ziyarat.
- Airport transfers at both ends.
- The journey between Makkah and Madinah.
- Laundry.
- How many nights in Madinah, which some packages trim.
- Group leader staffing, which is not a line on a quote but is paid for in it.
What is in no package at all
Budget for these whoever you book with: gifts, which are nearly always the largest unplanned spend, taxis, phone and data, excess baggage on the way home, and your own spending money. The full list is in hidden costs in Hajj packages.
The question that settles all of it
Ask for the excluded list in writing. It is a shorter list, a more useful one, and almost nobody asks for it. An organiser who sends it in one message has thought about the package; one who answers with reassurance has not.
We write ours out for each departure rather than waiting to be asked, on the Hajj packages page.
How to compare two quotes
Write the answers down side by side:
- Mina category, and where the camp sits
- Makkah hotel by name, and the distance
- Madinah hotel, and how many nights
- How many share the room at that price
- Direct flight or one stop, and the dates
- Which meals
- Qurbani in or out
- Ziyarat in or out
- What is excluded, in writing
- Cancellation terms, in writing
Any package can then be read properly. Two totals cannot be compared; two filled-in lists can. The question list to send to an agency is in what to ask a Hajj agency before booking, and how the price is built up is in the Hajj package cost breakdown.
A fair word about packages that include less
A package that includes less is not a worse package. Somebody who is happy to arrange their own meals and does not need Ziyarat organised may be better served by it, and cheaper.
What makes a package wrong is finding out afterwards. That is what the written exclusion list prevents.
Ask us what ours covers
Send us your dates and who is travelling, and we will send the inclusions and the exclusions in writing before anything is paid, with the Mina category and the hotel names in it.