With millions of Muslim travellers to Hajj, Umrah, Ziarath & Halal tours every year, our Islamic tourism market is clearly a growing market segment.
And with Mohamed Mubarak’s intriguing motives, there will be an easy & reliable platform for the entire Islamic market.
The entrepreneur is working hard on creating an online platform (www.goimomi.com) for the tour operators and aspiring travellers, a first of its kind in the country. We often hear disappointed pilgrims left stranded at airports, given poor services at the pilgrimage for the price paid and thereby creating a bitter experience due to many unrecognised travel firms operating in the market. This inconvenience caused by certain operators surely has a negative effect on one’s lifetime pilgrimage aspirations.
The Hajj experience is often reviewed by pilgrims and from genuine operators who suggest that many pilgrimage tour operators are unworthy, hence feel that this needs to be actioned at the earliest to ensure every pilgrim is treated with care to create a true experience, but unfortunately “No one has done anything about it,” says Mohamed Mubarak.
The entrepreneur has completed his Engineering from the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore and further graduated with a Master’s degree in Entrepreneurship from the University of Warwick, UK. After graduating in September 2012, he entered the pilgrimage tour operation industry which has been a core family business for decades. Ever since his involvement in the business for over five years he has clearly understood the tourism market and all the chaos involved. The family’s expertise within the industry along with Mohammed Mubarak’s entrepreneurship skills has helped understand the current scenario.
“It was a really a cool opportunity to delve into the next generation concept for our industry,” says Mohamed Mubarak. “We asked him the fundamental question: ‘how are you going to get Operators and customers onboard?’”
The rate of people getting online for shopping, socialising has grown dramatically to an unexpected level, and in addition to this, the government's initiative for a digital India has surely fast tracked the process of digitising several sectors, especially the travel industry. We can clearly observe the exponential growth and transformation of travel within India and abroad and is nearly comparable to western countries.
Also, we exhibited our business model in the Indian Hajj & Umrah Expo held in March 2018, and also in the Islamic Travel Mart, Mumbai 2018. The immediate response and on the spot Signups by our tour operators was overwhelming, Alhamdulillah. Says Mohamed.
Mohamed Mubarak & his team found that Hajj business operators have already been taken online by the government of Saudi Arabia for booking hotels, service providers, transport and visas since 2016. In the same way the Government of India has also brought all the recognised operators online for applying the quota and publishing their packages in the ministry’s website, Mohamed Mubarak adds.
He truly believes that the solution will be the creation of a smart, digital system to connect all the tour operators and the customers on a single online platform. Offering various additional services such as customised packages, forex purchase, insurance, shooting essential items for pilgrimage etc, will provide a one stop shopping solution for all of ones travel requirements.
“My big vision is to enable every aspiring traveller, to utilise the reviews before opting for a certain operator, always compare prices, and to book their pilgrimage with a reliable and approved operator to fulfil their pilgrimage aspiration with complete satisfaction. We want to enable the tour operators to have a healthy market competition. If we can do that, it will surely lead to real tangible benefits for both travellers and the operators themselves.”
