HalalBooking, the world’s leading OTA for halal-friendly travel, continued its success story in 2022. It announced its 2022 financial results with a new company sales record of USD 52 million for the year ended 31st December 2022. If compared in USD this is a 45% growth in sales compared to the previous year. This result exceeds the year’s USD 50 million target and was achieved despite new post-Covid challenges and pressures on consumer spending power, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, high flight ticket prices, the cost-of-living crisis, etc.
Whilst the company reports its results in US Dollars, due to the international nature of its business, most of its sales actually take place in Euro and GBP. Had it not been for the unusual strengthening of the US Dollar throughout 2022, results in USD would have been close to USD 60 million at a growth rate of 62%. This was, in fact, the YoY growth rate when compared in GBP and EUR and is also reflected in the 64% increase in the number of bookings.
Despite the uncertainty in the macro-economic environment, HalalBooking implemented its aggressive growth plan undeterred and delivered a strong financial performance setting a new company record. In 2022, more than 133,000 guests from 106 countries travelled to 71 different countries and spent 830,000 guest nights booked via HalalBooking. The 3-tiered HB Loyalty Club gained substantially in popularity and doubled its membership to more than 700,000 members, in part reflecting the company’s increase in marketing spend into lead generation campaigns through marketing partnerships with international brands such as Turkish Airlines and Mastercard and other marketing activities.
At the same time, the property portfolio expanded by 172,000 properties to over 433,000 properties in 88 countries via the expansion of API partnerships with intermediary suppliers, such as Expedia, providing more choice in more destinations. In addition, hundreds of technology projects were implemented to enhance the user-friendliness of the website and consumer offering to drive greater engagement with travellers. New features and special package rates for travel agency partners helped to expand the company’s B2B affiliate agency network to more than 2,500 partners worldwide and increased the contribution of the B2B segment. In Q4 the company signed an API partnership with Agoda, which will be added as another intermediary supplier in early 2023.
The company plans to invest the profit generated in 2022 into technology development, new integrations with OTAs, new marketing partnerships and the hiring of high calibre candidates to enable it to continue its success story and to achieve its 2023 sales target of USD100m as well as to increase both market and destination diversification. The strong Q4 results with a 90% growth rate and the level of bookings in January of this year so far, which currently show a 100% increase compared to the same period in January 2022 are good indicators that the company will achieve the new targets.
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