How we check our data

Rules, visas and dates

• Accepted sources: the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah and the Nusuk platform, the Saudi visa portal, the Ministry of Interior, the Saudi Press Agency, the General Authority for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, and your own government's travel advice.
• When an announcement is only available through a newspaper report, we say so and link the report.
• Agency blogs, booking sites and AI summaries are never used as a source. We use them only as leads and then confirm with the official body.
• If two official sources disagree, we show both and explain the difference.

Hotel distances

• Hotel and mosque positions come from OpenStreetMap (data built 4 Oct 2026).
• Makkah: we measure a straight line from the hotel's mapped point to the nearest of the five main gates of Masjid al-Haram. We use gates rather than the nearest wall because some walls have no entrance on that side.
• Madinah: we measure to the nearest point of the mosque building. Hotels usually quote shorter figures because they measure to the edge of the plaza.
• Walking time is the straight-line distance × 1.3 (for real routes) at 4.5 km/h.
• Gate numbers come only from the official list (1, 45, 62, 79, 100). Numbers found in map data are not shown because some do not match current signage.
• A hotel only gets its own page after we check it against its official listing or a major booking site: that it is operating, its current name, and what distance it advertises. Hotels whose mapped position looks doubtful are removed.
• These are estimates. Room position, lifts, crowd control and closed routes can add several minutes.

Money

Some hotel links are affiliate links: if you book, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This never changes the order of hotels or the distances shown. We may also show advertising.

Corrections

If something is out of date, please tell us with a link to the source. We review every report.