This year's hajj travel from the UK has caused great misery and heartache.
There was no inkling that there would be such hardships. In recent years about 25,000 pilgrims have been traveling to Saudi Arabia without any visa shortages.
Over the last three decades, there has also been a boom of hajj travel agencies - with some professional well-established companies, but also many 'cottage' companies - operating from home and relying on family networks in Saudi. Their role has been to (i) book airline travel tickets (ii) obtain visas from the Saudi Embassy in London (iii) make arrangements for transport from Jeddah to Mecca and back (iv) ensure tent facilities in designated areas in Arafah and Mina (v) make hotel reservations in Mecca, and also Medina where so desired by the pilgim.
The tour operators would charge one all-inclusive fee - ranging in recent years from �2, 000 to �3,500. They would collect the traveler's passport at the time of payment.
Some of the hajj travel agencies were ATOL registered (thus offering some consumer protection) while others claimed to be ATOL members, but in fact were not.
It seems that the Saudi authorities have been receiving increasing complaints from pilgrims about the services provided by their hajj tour operators, and in response, in April 2006, a selected list of approved Hajj Tour Operators was announced (the Saudi Embassy web site provides a link, but this is not working today). The Saudi authorites appear to have provided these approved HTOs with visa quotas. The Embassy website also indicates that it does not charge for hajj visas.
The problems in December 2006 have several aspects:
1. Hajj travel agencies collected funds from travelers in the expectation of obtaining visas from the Embassy, but found they had to deal with the HTOs. One question is whether the agencies were caught unawares or they knew of the new regulations? In either case this indicates lack of professionalism, either in not being aware of the situation, or not letting the consumer know the full picture.
2. The HTOs started rationing visas to the non-HTO travel agencies. At some point a black market was created. Many agencies demanded an extra visa payment from the travelers. This ranged from �500 to �800! Some pilgrims paid up, others refused on principle or because they could not afford it, specially when traveling as a group. Surely there must be an investigation on who has benefited from the black market? There must be greater transparency from the Saudi authorities on the number of block visas they allocate to the select HTOs with explanations if the number is reduced in a given year. For example one rumour is that the number of visas allocated to the UK was reduced because of incomplete construction works in the jamarat. However this is unlikely because the small number of British hujjaj are a drop in the ocean.
3. Those non-HTO agencies that had obtained visas then found that there were no available bookings. This means that their practice has been to leave bookings to the last possible date! Roundabout routes were then offered e.g. via Istanbul.
4. Some travelers then recovered their passport from the agent and attempted to make their own travel agencies. Many then fell for an Internet airline ticket scam and found their purchases deemed fraudulent when they turned up at Heathrow.
There are important lessons to be learned for the future. There are likely to be complaints to the Police, but surely the need now is for bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain or the Association of British Hujjaj to ensure there is information in the public domain so that future pilgrims do not suffer the same heartache and misery.
there have been ongoing issues for a number of years with visa's, but for some reason this years problems have surpassed those of before.
The main reasons for such problems (in my limited experience) is that of the agents taking bookings for which they do not have the authority to do so - by this I mean that each agent has their allocation of visas, but simply get greedy and over-book in the hope of obtaining visas elsewhere.
The packages themselves are also questionable, as you very rarely recieve good communication, this is purely because agents run themselves in to the ground with the goose-chace of finding extra visas.
We laugh at christmas becoming comercialised but surely we are not far behind with Hajj. Its become an issue which needs urgent attention as peoples livelihoods are being affected through annual leave arrangements, resignations on the grounds of going for hajj etc
as a community we need to make a noise - both locally and nationally to ensure that awareness is raised and pressure is put upon those individuals who are bending the system and spoiling it for legitimate, well managed travel operators/agents
Does anyone have further information or ideas for the future?
