Every number on this site comes from one of five places. Each page tells you which, and when we last checked.
1. Tracked prices
What we do. We maintain a list of hotels in Makkah and Madinah and log their nightly rates on a fixed weekly schedule, for a set of forward-looking date windows that we keep constant so the figures stay comparable over time.
The date windows we track:
- A standard non-peak window: 22 November 2026, a fixed date, not a rolling one
- The Ramadan window: 27 February 2027, inside the final ten nights of Ramadan 1448
- The winter school-holiday window: 28 December 2026
What we record: the lowest available nightly rate for a standard double room, the currency, and the date of capture.
What this lets us tell you that a one-off search cannot: whether a price is normal for that hotel at that time of year, how far ahead rates start climbing, and which properties discount late versus which only get more expensive.
Limitations, plainly: rates move constantly and vary by occupancy, room type, cancellation terms and the platform you book on. Our figures show you the shape of the market. They are not a quote, and the price you see when you book will differ.
How we decide a hotel has no rooms
This rule changed on 21 September 2026, after we found it had made one of our published findings wrong.
Booking.com shows “This property is unavailable on our site for your dates” for two quite different situations: the hotel genuinely has nothing left, or the hotel has a minimum-stay rule that your search does not satisfy. A one-night search against a two-night minimum returns the same wording as a sold-out hotel. We were reading both as no inventory.
We now search one night first, then two nights, then seven. A hotel is only recorded as having no inventory after it fails at every length we tried, and we record which lengths those were. Where a rate comes from a longer search we publish the per-night figure and mark it, and we check whether the hotel prices differently by length of stay before treating it as comparable.
This remains a floor, not a guarantee. A hotel with a three-, four- or five-night minimum and no seven-night availability would still read as empty to us. We say so on every page that uses these figures.
2. Measured distances
What we do. For every hotel we cover, we map the walking route to the nearest practical gate of Masjid al-Haram — the route a person actually walks, not the straight line a booking site reports. We record the gate, the route distance and an estimated walking time.
Why it matters. A hotel listed at “500m from the Haram” can be a fifteen-minute walk once you account for the pedestrian routing around the Jabal Omar and Ajyad developments, and longer again during peak crowd periods when direct routes close.
Limitations: walking times assume an unhurried adult pace on a normal day. During Ramadan and around prayer times, crowd management can close routes and add substantially to the walk. Where we know a route is affected, we say so. Anyone travelling with elderly parents, young children or a wheelchair should treat our times as a floor, not an estimate.
3. Direct verification with providers
When a detail materially affects a booking decision — family-room configurations, connecting-room availability, shuttle schedules, wheelchair access, early check-in for arriving pilgrims — we contact the provider and ask.
Pages that carry directly-verified information say so and give the month we asked. Hotel policies change; a verification is a snapshot.
4. Official and primary sources
For entry rules, visas, permits and transport, we work from primary sources: Saudi government and Nusuk platform publications, official carrier and rail operator information, and the destination country’s own guidance for each nationality we cover. We link to the primary source on every rules page so you can check it yourself.
We do not treat other travel websites as sources for rules. A great deal of the Umrah content online is years out of date and still ranking.
What we are not
We are not a religious authority. Our pages on the rites of Umrah summarise recognised scholarly sources and link to them. They are not rulings and should not be treated as such. For any question of religious obligation or validity, consult a qualified scholar.
We have no financial relationship with any hotel, operator or agency. We sell nothing and accept no payment for inclusion, position or coverage.
We are not a booking service. We cannot change, cancel or resolve a reservation. Every booking is between you and the provider.
How often we recheck
- Tracked hotel prices — weekly
- Hotel distance and gate data — every 6 months, or when construction or route changes are reported
- Entry rules, visas and permits — monthly, and immediately on any announced change
- Transport prices and schedules — quarterly
- Directly-verified provider policies — annually, or when a reader reports a discrepancy
Every page carries a Last verified date. If a page is showing an old date, its figures are old — we would rather show you that than hide it.
You can see this method in use, week by week, on the Umrah hotel price index — every reading since 24 August 2026, including the ones where we got something wrong and said so. The distance measurements described above sit behind what each Makkah district actually costs.
Corrections
We correct errors quickly and note what changed. If you find something wrong — a price that never existed, a walk that takes twice as long, a rule that has changed — email hello@umrahindex.com. Reader corrections go to the front of the queue.