Qafilo — Umrah and Hajj bookings on the agency’s own website

The problem: a whole season run from a spreadsheet and a phone

Many Umrah agencies still run their season through WhatsApp, a spreadsheet and a folder of passport photos. Places are counted by hand, the price of a triple room for two adults and a child is worked out on a calculator, and nobody sees which deposit is overdue until the customer calls.

The answer: bookings on the agency’s own website

Each package presents the trip (nights in Medina and Makkah, hotels, distance from the Haram, meals, what is included), its departure dates, the remaining places and the starting price. The family chooses its travellers and rooms and sees the total and the deposit before sending its request. No payment is taken online: the agency confirms first.

What was built

A WordPress plugin that adapts to the website’s theme and runs on shared hosting: a “To do today” screen for the agency (requests, deposits and balances, refunds, expiring passports, departures below their minimum), a price grid per room and per age, places protected against double selling, cancellations according to the agency’s own scale, read-only access for the guide, a REST API and a public departures feed for comparison sites.

Compliance and sensitive data

An Umrah trip reveals a religious belief: pilgrims’ data is sensitive. The standard information form required for package travel is generated from the agency’s details, consents are dated, passport numbers are encrypted and masked, and documents are deleted after the return. The data stays on the agency’s own hosting.

My role: product design & development

From scoping around how agencies actually work to development, testing and publication: product design, architecture, development and quality assurance, with SKGenius for the booking journey, the right-to-left interface and the Arabic content. The website and the demo are live: qafilo.fulldo.fr · live demo.