Zaitoon umrahReviews of hajartravels.com

Our family embarked on a very long awaited Umrah trip on December 23, 2024, with Hajar Travels. Shazim Iftikhar was our agent, Br Mairaj was the person of contact in Saudi Arabia and Muhaibiya Transportation was managing our transportation. Things started going wrong from the beginning of the trip. We paid a hefty amount to Hajar Travels for assigning our seats ahead of time but found out in JFK airport that Br Shazim did not lock and pay for our seats even though we have already paid Hajar Travels for them. Our transportation from Makkah to Madina came more than 5 hours late! We waited in the lobby of our hotel with a diabetic patient without any food for 5 hours. Br Mairaj was not reachable and Muhaibiya transportation personnel was reassuring us every time we inquired that our car is on its way and it should reach our hotel in 15 minutes. The driver of our car informed us that he was only contacted 45 minutes prior to him coming to pick us up. So WHO is lying? We arrived at Madinah close to midnight and was informed by our hotel front desk person that our room has ONLY been booked for one night (we were there for 3 nights) and we have to vacate our room in a few hours. We contacted both Br Mairaj and Br Shazim and eventually this problem was resolved after our check out time. We waited for our transportation for Madinah Jiyarat for 8 and half hours and it NEVER showed up. We kept Br Shazim Iftikhar regularly informed about whatever was going wrong and sought his help. He kept on requesting us to have patience. But I honestly do not know what level of patience one has to have to travel with Hajar Travels! Upon return to United States we have reached out to Br Shazim Iftikhar and asked for reimbursement of funds ONLY for the services paid for but NOT PROVIDED. He constantly mixed up instances of wrong doing in order to avoid their responsibility, Wrongly blamed us for things going unexpectedly, and tried to shift the blame from them to us. During our conversation we had the distinct feeling that he is trying to taint us as liars who are trying to cheat benefits out of them. I clearly have mentioned to him that how they behaved with us cannot be the Islamic code of conduct and we are leaving the judging part to Allah(swt) for all the mental anxiety Hajar Travels has created for us. As a good Muslim we will be fair in our review. Br Usman, our Umrah guide, was a TRUE blessing from Allah(swt). We are really appreciative of his great service. Because we decided to go to Umrah with Hajar Travels, 10 more of our friends went with us with Hajar Travels. My last words - May Allah(swt) NEVER in my lifetime or my children’s lifetime EVER put us in a bind that we will have to take the service of Hajar Travels again.

We went to Medinah first. The hotel arrangements were fine in Medina. When we went to Makkah we were placed in Elaf Kinda Hotel. The hotel was ok. But everyday the hotel management used to tell us that for that day our room has not been confirmed by the travel agency so we might have to leave our room in a few hours.This happened every single day and my husband frantically tried to contact the travel agent.The travel agent didn’t receive our calls. It was after two three hours of calling them again and again and requesting them via text they would confirm with the hotel. This happened every day and as a result we couldn’t peacefully do what we were planning to do every day. We paid the travel agency our hotel fare long time ago. But why they made this mess I don’t understand. Maybe they had to pay less for booking the room everyday. I will not recommend Hajr Travels to anyone. In fact I will warn others about Hajr Travels.

First and foremost, I would like to express that my mom and dad did not have a good experience. Firstly, the flight was delayed by one day which made their trip one day shorter. I understand that you have nothing to do with airline cancelations but there should be some sort of compensation since they did miss one night of the Hotel stay. The original flight was JFK to Cairo, and from Cairo to Madinah. Due to all the cancelations, the Cairo to Madinah flight was not available. They had to go Cairo to Jeddah prolonging their trip by much more. Second, once they finally reached Jeddah, they were told that they will take the train to Madinah. When they got out of the plane and were searching for the train, they were told that they would have to take a taxi to a different airport for the train. They were not told about this and they had to arrange a taxi to go take the train. Once they reached Madinah train station, they had to figure out transportation once again on their own to the hotel, which they paid from out of pocket. Once they reached the hotel, they also had issues checking in and then finally it was resolved once the travel agency name was verified. My parents are not young, they had a very hard time with the lack of professionalism and lack of planning on the agency’s part. When they left Madinah for Makkah, they checked out at 1pm and waited outside on the sidewalk for 4 hrs for transportation. What would have made it better was if things were more thoroughly communicated. They had to figure out on their own that the train was at a different airport and arrange multiple transportations when this should have all been planned by the agency. If we are going through an agency there should be no reason why they had to go through this.

This was my first umrah and hajar travels was recommended to me by many people and I saw that they had really good reviews so I gave them a try. This was a mistake. This travel group was basically non existent. There was no communication at all and there were so many mishaps that this was my biggest waste of money. The guy who was suppose to be incharge of everything was missing the whole time and someone else was put on spot and he didn’t know anything. He took us to ziyarat and didn’t utter a word about anything and no knowledge on anything that we visited. The audio they played in there bus didn’t even play properly so we had zero knowledge of anything and they never clarified how long we would be spending at places so they ended up blaming us for not knowing and the people in the group were so rude. They had merged other travel group with hajar travel so it was a big mess. The bus to Makkah was suppose to arrive at 1pm but it took them 3 hours to arrange anything for us and the guy Miaraj just turned his phone off to not deal with this issue and we heard that he does that a lot whenever there is a conflict. The guide for umrah barely knew English so all the non urdu speakers were struggling. Hajar travel on WhatsApp was basically non existent aswel. They don’t message you when you get there and the group they have made for you, you aren’t even allowed to message so the groupchat is a waste. It just felt like hajar travel just got me a hotel booking and that’s it. Everything was a waste of money. The hotel in Makkah was nice but Medina’s hotel was a mess, it was way too tight to fit in so many people. Please do your research before you go because they don’t give you any information such as rawdah booking. Never again.

Read reviews on BBB before working with them. The worst experience happened with me so wanted to warn others.

Embarking on what was supposed to be a sacred journey turned into a nightmare when we entrusted our arrangements to Hajar Travels. Promised seamless accommodations and flights for our Umrah pilgrimage, we soon found ourselves entangled in a web of broken promises, deceit, and incompetence. From the outset, Hajar Travels assured us that our trip would be flawlessly coordinated, urging us to trust them with every aspect of our journey. However, as our departure date drew near, the cracks in their facade became glaringly apparent. The hotels we specifically requested—Swissotel and Anwar Al Madina—were mysteriously absent from our itinerary, replaced with alternatives we had not agreed upon. Attempts to rectify the situation were met with evasiveness and false reassurances from Hajar Travels' representatives. The situation took a turn for the worse when we discovered that the individual managing our booking had been dismissed due to incompetence and internal issues. Despite assurances from Hajar Travels that a resolution would be swiftly reached, the replacement they provided lacked even the most basic understanding of our arrangements, resorting to lies to pacify us. Escalating the issue only led to further frustration, as higher-ups within Hajar Travels claimed ignorance and had no record of our trip in their system. It took exhaustive effort, including reaching out directly to the CEO, to finally garner attention to our plight. Even obtaining a refund proved to be a Herculean task, with Hajar Travels opting for the least convenient method—issuing it via Zelle instead of the credit card we had originally used for payment. Our experience with Hajar Travels serves as a cautionary tale, highlighting their deceitful practices and blatant disregard for customer service. Entrusting such an important journey to them was a grave mistake, and we implore others to heed our warning and steer clear of Hajar Travels to avoid similar nightmares.

It was the worst experience I had during my umrah trip everyone in our group was so disappointed and upset majority of them has already reported this agency to better business bureau and preparing to file a lawsuit please do not give them any business they are all false and lies to get your business

Me and my wife had the worst experience hajar travel issued a turkish airline ticket for us if you miss your flight at Istanbul they don’t issue a new boarding pass and cancel the rest of your next flight link to that ticket even the returning ticket was cancelled without refund that’s what happened to us it was a nightmare at the airport they force us to buy a new tickets and hajar couldn’t update our ticket we couldn’t move forward with no food and nowhere to sleep for 3 days … hajar travel didn’t refund us even partially Your reply to this review is useless you still hold my money we still didn’t go to Umrah and we will remember the suffering inside Istanbul Airport forever