The problem
Travel agents still build holidays the hard way: one platform for flights, others for hotels (or direct relationships with in-country agencies), and transfers and activities arranged individually through partner agencies. The process is unoptimised, inefficient, time-consuming, and prone to human error — and the stacked markups leave agents with thin margins.
How it works
Safra acts as a one-stop shop for travel agents creating holiday packages. The platform partners and integrates directly with service providers and wholesalers across every component — flights, accommodation, activities, and airport transfers — and offers agents easy API integration with free API support. Because Safra integrates directly with wholesalers, prices come in significantly lower, leaving agents a higher margin and room to offer travellers more competitive prices.
Pain points
Antiquated agency tooling (“it’s truly shocking that travel agents are still working on antiquated platforms that require them to basically code to book a flight,” says CEO Thaer Samara), fragmented sourcing across platforms, uncompetitive net rates, and manual assembly errors.
Business model
B2B platform economics: Safra monetises the spread on wholesaler-sourced travel inventory flowing through agents, while agents benefit from lower net rates and a faster, design-led booking experience they can resell to end consumers.
Challenges
Shifting agents off decades-old terminals and direct-hotel habits, building inventory depth that rivals global bed banks, and expanding adoption “throughout the region” from a Ramallah base with a small team and an undisclosed seed round.
Funding
- Raised: undisclosed seed investment from Ibtikar Fund (Jan 2019), announced by the firm without disclosing size, earmarked for expanding the platform’s reach and use across the region (MENAbytes).
Latest — Jan 2019
In January 2019 Safra announced seed funding from Ibtikar Fund, with Ibtikar’s Habib Hazzan citing GCC outbound travel — over $90 billion spent in 2017, mostly booked through agents — as the fragmented market Safra is built to bring efficiency to.