Halalbooking.com, a travel search and booking website for halal-conscious travellers, has reported record sales in the first two months of the year, achieving over 2.5 times year-on-year growth.

The company is participating at ITB Berlin, representing one of the world’s newest and most dynamic tourism sectors.

Elnur Seyidli, CEO of Halalbooking.com, said: “We had a wonderful start into 2018 building on the continuous success of the past few years. Furthermore, I am excited to announce that Bas Lemmens, a co-founder of Booking.com, joins HalalBooking as a non-executive board member. Bas has 18 years of senior online travel sector experience and is currently CEO of Meetings.com (part of HotelPlanner). He will be helping the CxO team to reach HalalBooking’s unicorn goal.”

Turkey gaining popularity among Halalbooking's customers
Turkey has become one among the most popular destinations for Halalbooking.com's customers as the company has witnessed its sales to Turkey double in 2016 and again in 2017.

"We brought 35,000 tourists to Turkey in 2017 and we are on track to repeat this double growth in 2018 aiming for approx. 70,000-80,000 customers going to Turkey via HalalBooking.com," HalalBooking.com’s CMO, Ufuk Seçgin, said at ITB

“We receive bookings for accommodation in Turkey from tourists in over 75 countries across the world, but our biggest markets are Germany and the UK. We found that our customers from both markets and other EU countries were extremely loyal and remained keen to travel to Turkey over the past couple of years," he said.

Antalya is the company’s most popular Turkish destination, where some of the world’s leading halal-friendly hotels are situated, but the website also features other Turkish beach resorts as well as city hotels, thermal hotels, and even a ski hotel in Uludag. In fact, HalalBooking.com has signed up exclusive rights to market two of Turkey’s leading halal-friendly beach resorts: Bera Alanya Resort and Wome Deluxe. These hotels will now be available to the international market exclusively through HalalBooking.com.

Portfolio expansion
The company has announced plans to rapidly increase the number of accommodation, with the aim of listing 10,000 properties by the end of 2018.

HalalBooking’s chief operating officer, Enver Cebi said: "Much of this expansion will be in major European cities such as Paris, Rome and London. There will also be a focus on beach resorts in countries such as Spain and thermal and spa hotels in countries such as Bosnia. A number of south-east Asian destinations are also being launched in 2018 including Malaysia, Bali/Indonesia, The Maldives, Singapore and Thailand.”

HalalBooking.com will be showcasing at ITB Berlin until March 11. - TradeArabia News Service