Arabnet Arabnet

HolidayME, a Dubai-based travel start-up, has recently announced that it has secured $4 million in series A form a Al Sanie Group, of Saudi investment group.

HolidayME offers customizable tour packages that include hotels, various activities and transfers for various destinations around the globe. The platform features curated readymade itineraries for hundreds of destinations worldwide that users can pick from, but the trick lies in the fact that they can make changes and fine tune the selected package to their liking.

Once that is done, they can book all of the activities in one place without the hassle of having to deal with each individual institution. The service also integrates with TripAdvisor offering users access to reviews of hotels. The are currently over 100,000 hotels and over 8,000 activities on offer, along with airport pick up and drop off facility across 300 cities globally.

HolidayMe Co-founder & CEO Geet Bhalla was quoted as saying that, for now, HolidayME will be focusing on the Middle East market, after which it would be expanding globally. He also believes that the company will break even by early 2016 “at the current levels.”

The company launched its operations quite recently in the Middle East in the month of November 2014. It currently employs 85 people along with its 2 founders and has offices across UAE, Saudi Arabia and India.

“Saudi Arabia and UAE is a $15 billion outbound travel market, with a clear demand for customized holiday experiences. The market has seen a sudden exponential increase in e-commerce and online activities, placing HolidayMe in a prime position to capture the market at this stage,” says Geet.

HolidayME’s other Co-founder Digvijay Pratap added that “multi-destination holiday packages and flights options are also in the pipeline, adding to the website’s inventory.” The Arabic version of the website is also set to be launched soon.

Geet has over 15 years of experience under his belt in enterprise sales and marketing. Digvijay on the other hand has worked with a number of companies from the travel sector including Hoteltravel.com, which was later acquired by Makemytrip.com, Thomas Cook, Aviva and Pathfinders.

In an interview with Tnooz, Geet spoke of the huge opportunity present in the Middle East. “The overall travel market size in the Middle East is estimated to be worth $10 billion at present with the online travel segment expected to row exponentially in the years to come. A report from Google stated that around 39% of leisure travellers in the United Arab Emirates use the internet to plan a trip, however only 12% actually purchase online. With HolidayMe, we would like to bridge this gap.”