UK’s Serendipity Tailormade, Travel Counsellors sign first halal travel tie-up

DUBAI - UK’s Serendipity Tailormade has been appointed Muslim-friendly travel supplier for bespoke leisure and corporate solutions provider Travel Counsellors, marking a first tie-up with a mainstream travel company for the Islamic economy firm.

“Travel Counsellors was interested in a new halal travel product for their travel counsellors. We’re acting as a destination management company (DMC) for Travel Counsellors,” Nabeel Shariff, founder and director of Serendipity Tailormade, told Salaam Gateway.

Manchester, UK-based Travel Counsellors operates a network of independent agents who deliver bespoke solutions for the leisure and corporate sectors. According to the company, it has around 1,700 travel counsellors in the UK—its home and biggest market—and Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.

“Rather than Travel Counsellors having to adapt whatever they currently have or go without [any halal travel products], we’re able to provide their clients access to halal food, private experiences, and excursions,” said Shariff.

Serendipity is offering Travel Counsellors packages to 22 destinations in Africa, East Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

90 percent of Serendipity’s current client base are based in the UK, said Shariff. The tie-up with Travel Counsellors will give the company exposure to the GCC market.

The majority of Travel Counsellors’ Muslim-friendly business will be outbound from the UAE to begin with, Travel Counsellors UAE manager Maggie Bootsman told Salaam Gateway. “We have five travel counsellors in the UAE who are Muslim and who are CrescentRated and we want to support them and their customers to make sure they have the right products for their customers,” she added.

Singapore-based halal travel specialist CrescentRating rates agents who can show an understanding of the needs of Muslim travellers.

Bootsman acknowledged the growth opportunity in halal travel and said Travel Counsellors’ partnership with Serendipity will help position it as a provider of Muslim-friendly travel serving the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

“We’ve had suppliers and DMCs that offer halal products but this is the first time we’ve actually looked at a company dedicated to the Muslim sector,” said Bootsman.

According to Bootsman, the company is looking at including more cultural awareness programmes into their in-house e-learning training for its agents.

For Serendipity’s Shariff, interest from a mainstream company such as Travel Counsellors shows confidence in the growth of the halal travel sector. “The fact that Travel Counsellors as a mainstream brand has come into halal travel shouts volumes. For a company of Travel Counsellors’ size to embrace the halal travel potential shows a lot of faith, and shows commercial viability,” Shariff added.

He said Serendipity is seeing growth year-on-year and it is on track to grow five years in a row. Serendipity started in 2012 and also runs sister company Luxury Halal Travel.

Travel Counsellors earns its money from selling travel packages, as well as from the 295 British pound ($400.88) per new agent sign-on fee. Agents new to the industry can get training from the company’s Travel Academy for a fee of 10,000 pounds.

In July, Travel Counsellors reported it had surpassed 500 million pounds in total transactions for the first time since it was established in 1994.

CEO Steve Byrne told The Telegraph in July the company was looking at its options for the next stage of its growth and that an IPO was a consideration.

Travel Counsellors is backed by private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe that invested an undisclosed sum for a stake in the company in October 2014.

($1 = 0.7356 British pounds)