About the Client

Welcome Saudi is a travel and hospitality platform focused on Saudi Arabia, designed to help travelers discover hotels, restaurants, and tourist destinations across the country.

The project was initiated by an entrepreneur from Saudi Arabia. He came up with the idea of a localized travel discovery and review website tailored specifically to the Saudi market.

At the early stage, the priority was to build a high-quality platform, grow traffic, and establish unique content before enabling commissions. The long-term vision of the platform was to operate as a monetized aggregator through affiliate commissions, advertising placements, and a SaaS subscription model for hospitality businesses.




CHALLENGE

Building a Travel Aggregator Without Existing Data Access

The client approached us without a finalized requirements document. The product vision was clear, but all functional decisions had to be defined iteratively during the discovery and development process.

A major challenge was that large booking platforms such as Booking.com, Agoda, and Expedia do not allow data aggregation until a platform demonstrates:

  • unique content
  • real traffic (at least ~2,000 monthly users)

This meant that Welcome Saudi could not rely on standard affiliate APIs during the early phase and had to find alternative, legally compliant ways to populate the platform with reliable data while growing its audience.


SOLUTION

We worked closely with the client to shape the product step by step. Our project manager created wireframes during the discovery phase, and the full UI/UX design was developed from scratch by our design partner.

From a data perspective, we implemented a hybrid approach:

  • Hotels: Integrated with the public HotelBeds API to obtain hotel names, descriptions, and photos
  • Prices: Used SerpAPI to retrieve up-to-date pricing data from booking websites (Booking, Agoda, Expedia, Kayak) at a low monthly cost
  • Reviews: Aggregated reviews from Google and allowed users to submit native reviews
  • Restaurants & destinations : Added manually due to the lack of reliable open data sources

This approach allowed the platform to launch legally, grow traffic, and prepare for future affiliate partnerships.






CHALLENGE

Building a Travel Aggregator Without Existing Data Access

Another challenge was preparing the platform for future monetization while keeping payment security and compliance simple.

The client wanted to:

  • enable paid listings and subscriptions for businesses
  • avoid PCI compliance risks during early stages
  • support local payment requirements in Saudi Arabia

SOLUTION

We integrated PayTabs , a payment provider that handles sensitive card data on its own side. This allowed the platform to accept payments without storing or processing card data internally, significantly reducing security and compliance risks.

At the same time, we laid the groundwork for a SaaS model:

  • Travelers use the platform for free
  • Hospitality businesses can claim and manage listings through paid subscriptions
  • Owners must submit verification details to claim ownership of a property

This setup allowed Welcome Saudi to focus on growth first, with monetization mechanisms ready to activate when traffic reached the required level.



Key features



Search by hotels, restaurants, and destinations


Interactive map showing all properties


Ratings and rankings


User-generated reviews


Detailed listings with descriptions and prices from multiple booking providers


Property submission and ownership claim process


News and editorial content managed by the client


Instagram feed integration


SaaS model for business listings and management


Multi-language support (including RTL format)


RTL support was critical for Welcome Saudi, as Arabic is the primary language of its users. Implementing RTL required adapting layouts, navigation, and interactive elements to ensure a consistent and intuitive experience across both RTL and LTR languages.



Native Booking Inregration

The platform has evolved from an outbound affiliate model to native hotel booking directly on the Welcome Saudi website.


We integrated ZentrumHub , a hotel aggregation and booking platform that provides:

  • real-time hotel availability and rates via API
  • booking functionality directly within the platform
  • analytics and hotel popularity data
  • built-in markup management for monetization

Additional integrations:

  • Stripe for payments
  • SendGrid for transactional email notifications

This transition enables Welcome Saudi to control the full booking flow and monetize bookings through configurable markups instead of external redirects.


BENEFITS FOR THE CLIENT

As a result of our work, Welcome Saudi gained:

A fully functional travel discovery and booking platform built from scratch
A legal and scalable approach to data aggregation in a restricted ecosystem
Strong early traction through social media growth (17,000 Instagram followers in the first months)
A flexible monetization model combining SaaS subscriptions, advertising, and booking markups
A platform ready to scale from content discovery to full transactional bookings

Welcome Saudi is now positioned as a localized alternative to global travel platforms, built specifically for the Saudi market and ready for long-term growth.


TECHNOLOGIES