Questions clients actually ask

It depends on scope, but here is the honest shape of it. A one-off project such as a website build is quoted as a fixed price once we know how many pages and languages you need. Ongoing work runs as a monthly retainer, because SEO, content and campaigns only compound if they are continuous.

We do not publish a rate card, for one reason: a five-vehicle desert tour operator and a DMC handling inbound groups need very different things, and a fixed package would mean one of them pays for work they do not need. After a free strategy call you get a written proposal with the price, the deliverables and the timeline on it.

Different services move on very different clocks, and any agency that gives you one number for all of them is guessing.

• Website build: two to six weeks from kickoff to live.
• Paid and social campaigns: signal within two to four weeks.
• AI search visibility: often faster than traditional SEO, because far fewer competitors in this region are structured for it yet.
• Organic SEO rankings: three to six months for competitive terms. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is either targeting keywords nobody searches or is about to do something that gets you penalised.

We ask about your business before we talk about marketing: what you sell, what your margins look like, which departures or seasons actually need filling, and what you have already tried.

Then you get an initial read on what we would prioritise and roughly what it would cost. No slide deck, no pressure. If we do not think we can move your numbers, we will say so on that call rather than sell you a retainer.

No. Retainers run month to month with thirty days notice. Project work is scoped and fixed price.

Long lock-ins mostly protect the agency, not the client. If the work is producing results you will want to continue, and if it is not, a twelve-month contract simply delays an uncomfortable conversation.

Traditional SEO gets you into a list of blue links. AI search optimisation, sometimes called AEO or GEO, gets you named inside the answer when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI overview a question directly.

The behaviour has already changed. Travellers increasingly type "who runs good multi-day treks in AlUla" into an AI assistant rather than opening ten tabs. If the assistant does not know your company exists, you are not in the shortlist, no matter where you rank on page one.

The work involves structured data, clear factual content an engine can extract and cite, consistent business information across the web, and permitting AI crawlers to read your site. Most sites in this region are still quietly blocking those crawlers by default.

No, and this is a common misunderstanding. Google's position is that it rewards helpful, original content regardless of how it was produced, and penalises low-value content regardless of how it was produced. The problem was never the tool.

What does get penalised is publishing volume for its own sake: thin pages, near-duplicate articles, content with no first-hand knowledge behind it. We use AI for research, drafting and testing at speed, then a human who knows travel decides what is accurate and worth publishing. Nothing goes live unreviewed.

An AI agent is a trained assistant that handles a repetitive part of your operation, around the clock, in Arabic and English. For a tour operator that usually means the same twenty questions arriving at all hours: what fitness level is required, what is included, do I need a visa, how big is the group, is there a single supplement.

The agent is trained on your actual itineraries, rates and policies, so it answers accurately rather than generically. It qualifies the enquiry, captures the details you need, and hands you someone who is ready to book instead of someone still deciding.

It is not a chatbot widget with canned replies. It connects to how you actually work, and it escalates to a human when the question needs one.

Fair question, and the honest answer is that AI collapses the cost of production, not the cost of judgement.

AI can draft fifty social posts in a minute. It cannot tell you that your October departures are the ones bleeding money, that your Saudi audience converts on WhatsApp rather than email, or that the campaign you want to run will attract exactly the wrong kind of traveller. That comes from having operated in this industry.

What you are paying for is the decision layer: what to build, what to ignore, and when to stop spending. The AI is why that costs a fraction of what a traditional agency would charge for the same output.

We start by auditing what you have. Plenty of sites need repairs rather than replacement, and a rebuild you did not need is an expensive way to start a relationship.

A rebuild is usually the right call when the site is slow on mobile, cannot be updated without a developer, has no Arabic version, or is built on a platform that blocks proper SEO. If none of that applies, we fix and optimise instead and put the budget somewhere it earns more.

Because in the Gulf, Arabic is a market rather than a translation. Travellers research in one language and book in another depending on the trip, who they are travelling with, and how much they trust the operator.

Most travel sites in the region treat Arabic as an afterthought: machine-translated, poorly typeset, sometimes broken right-to-left layout. That signals carelessness to exactly the customers with the highest booking value. A properly built Arabic version also doubles the surface area Google and AI engines can index for you.

Against your business numbers, not vanity metrics. Impressions and follower counts do not pay for a coach or a permit.

Depending on the engagement we track enquiries received, cost per qualified enquiry, seats or bookings attributed to each channel, share of direct versus intermediated bookings, and whether AI assistants name you when asked about your category. You get a monthly report in plain language explaining what moved and why, and what we are changing next month.

You do, entirely. Domain, hosting, website files, ad accounts, analytics, social profiles, and any AI agent we build are registered in your name and remain yours.

Some agencies hold these hostage so leaving becomes painful. If you ever stop working with us, you keep everything and we hand over access cleanly.

Because twelve years working in it across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Egypt means we start from how your business actually makes money rather than needing it explained.

Seats per departure and the minimum that makes a trip viable. Booking lead times that run months ahead. Margin per passenger after suppliers and guides are paid. Shoulder season. Repeat travellers and the referrals they bring. A generalist agency has to learn all of that on your budget.

No. Travel and tourism is where our sector knowledge is deepest, but the services themselves apply to any business that needs to be found and booked.

We also work with businesses entering or growing in the UAE and Saudi markets more broadly, where the business development side matters as much as the marketing.

We are based in Jeddah, so Saudi Arabia is our home market. We also work across the UAE, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Egypt, and take on international clients who need a partner inside this region.

These are markets we have operated in rather than researched. Search behaviour, payment habits, which platform people actually message you on, and how much of the journey happens on WhatsApp all differ between them, and campaigns built without knowing that tend to underperform quietly.

Deliberately lean. A core team leads strategy and delivery, and specialist partners are brought in per project when a job needs a particular skill.

This is the model AI makes viable. You get senior attention on your account rather than being handed to a junior, and you are not paying overhead for an office full of people who never touch your work.

Less than you might expect, but the parts that matter are not optional.

• Access: to your website, analytics and ad accounts, or help creating them.
• Raw material: photos and video from actual trips. In adventure travel this is the single biggest driver of bookings and no amount of AI substitutes for it.
• Your calendar: departure dates and seasons, so campaigns land when decisions are made.
• One decision maker and roughly an hour a month to review reporting.

Yes. We often handle the parts an in-house team is not resourced for, such as AI search optimisation or agent building, while they keep running social or events.

We will tell you plainly if we think the split creates duplicated spend, but we are not going to insist on taking over work that is already being done well.

Not on rankings, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does. No agency controls Google's algorithm or what an AI model decides to cite, and a guarantee on something outside your control is a sales tactic rather than a commitment.

What we do commit to: the deliverables and timeline written into your proposal, honest monthly reporting including the things that did not work, and telling you before you spend if we think a campaign will not move your numbers. Month-to-month terms mean you can hold us to that.