Yamsafer

Yamsafer is an online hotel booking website which offers an innovative feature known as “Cardless Bookings”. Yamsafer enables travelers to book a large inventory of hotels located in the Middle East and North Africa ( MENA ) region including Turkey. The company’s site now lists about 3,000 hotels located in 16 countries and provides hotel rates that are typically lower than other international online hotel sites. Cardless Bookings In January 2014, Yamsafer was the first hotel booking site to offer the “Cardless Bookings” feature globally, where customers do not need a credit card to guarantee or confirm a hotel reservation, but instead are required to make payment once they arrive at the hotel. The feature is currently available in select cities: Amman , Madaba , Aqaba , Dead Sea , Ramallah , Bethlehem , Cairo , Jeddah , Kuwait City and Manama . “Cardless Bookings” feature has been introduced to its customers as a result of the significantly low credit card penetration rates in the MENA region compared to global more mature markets and to also help eliminate online customer fears of providing their credit card information online. With the “Cardless Bookings” feature, Yamsafer has removed the traditional deposit fee requirements usually requested by hotels of their guests. Recognition Yamsafer is being recognized in the MENA region for its high quality Arabic and English content, targeting Arabic-speaking clients in the online travel space. Yamsafer also provides smaller hotels and guesthouses, which were previously offline, the opportunity to market themselves in an online space and serve international markets. In January 2011, Wamda selected Yamsafer as the Best ecommerce startup as part of the Best MENA Startups of 2011 competition. Updates 2015 Yamsafer Team has been working eagerly hand in hand with technology bringing more development and ground breaking innovations to the industry of Hotel Booking in the middle east. Early June Yamsafer announced receiving the 2nd round of investment of $3.5 Million Dollars from Global Founders Capital with the participation of Sadara Venture and other undisclosed investors. Short after that Yamsafer announced releasing its long anticipated Yamsafer Application for smart phones, available on both Play Store and App Store. The app offers Yamsafer customers a new feature which enables them to Call Yamsafer's Help Centre for free, hence decreasing the gap between the traveller and Yamsafer. In an interview Faris Zaher the CEO commented:"Expensive call roaming charges and long call-waiting queues both make for a horrible customer service experience. We’ve changed all of that by putting top VoIP (Voice over IP) technology to work.” Zaher further added, “If you’re using our app, you can get on a free call with us within 30 seconds. That’s the fast and personal response that customers expect when they trust brands with their hotel bookings.” About Yamsafer mashable IT Briefing Yahoo!¹