What to share when booking Umrah transport is a short list: the names of the people travelling, a mobile number that works, the pickup place, destination, date and time in Saudi local time, how many passengers and bags, the flight number for airport journeys, and any practical needs such as a child seat or wheelchair. That is enough to book and run the journey. Passport scans, visa documents, card numbers, passwords and one-time codes are not part of a transfer booking, and they should never be sent in a chat, an email or a public post to “make the request complete”.
This guide is for the family organiser booking airport transfers and hotel journeys for parents or relatives, and for anyone helping them. It sets out the personal details for an airport transfer field by field, explains what to keep out of the process and why, shows how to spot a request that should make you stop, and covers keeping travel documents private in family chats, screenshots and shared devices. A worked example and a checklist close the guide.
The short answer: needed, useful, never
| Category | Examples | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Needed | Lead traveller name, customer mobile, journey details, passengers, bags | The search and checkout |
| Needed when booking for someone else | Traveller’s name, traveller’s phone, emergency contact | Checkout |
| Useful | Flight number, hotel phone, practical needs, a second contact | Checkout and booking notes |
| Keep private | Passport and visa scans, card numbers, security codes, passwords, one-time codes | Nowhere in the transport process |
| Keep general | Medical history, full itineraries, other bookings | Describe the practical need only |
The rule behind the table is simple. What to share when booking Umrah transport is whatever the journey needs, in the place designed for it. Everything else stays with you.
What to share when booking Umrah transport, field by field
The booking form is built around the journey, so it asks only for what a driver and a booking team use.
The journey itself
A journey is one pickup place, one destination, a date and time in Saudi local time, and the number of adults, children and infants, large bags and cabin bags. Up to 8 stops can be added in journey order. Child seats (infant seat, child seat or booster) and a wheelchair requirement can be added in the search. None of this is sensitive, and all of it matters.
Contact details
Checkout requires a mobile number for the customer. If the booking is for someone else, it also requires the traveller’s name, the traveller’s phone and an emergency contact. There is an optional group leader phone field. Our guide to which phone number to give for an Umrah pickup explains how to choose them.
Names
The lead traveller’s name should match the passport spelling, because that is how the traveller will be identified on the day. That does not mean the passport itself is needed. Our guide to the name on an Umrah transfer booking explains why the spelling matters and the document does not.
Flight number
For airport journeys, the flight number is requested at checkout. It is the airline’s flight number, the airline code and digits printed on the ticket, not your airline booking reference or ticket number.
Booking notes
The notes describe entrances, gates and practical needs: the hotel tower, the hotel’s phone number, “one traveller uses a walking stick”, “two large blue cases”. Notes are for the journey, not for documents.
Personal details for an airport transfer: what is never needed
Some items feel official enough that families assume they must be part of the booking. They are not part of a transfer booking, and sending them anywhere outside their proper use only creates risk.
- Passport scans or photos. The name spelling is enough. A passport image carries a document number, date of birth and a photograph, none of which a car journey uses.
- Visa or permit documents. They are for entry and for official systems, not for transport.
- Card numbers, expiry dates and security codes. Payment for a Pilgrim Taxi booking is made online at checkout. Card details are entered there, not typed into a message.
- Account passwords. Nobody should ask for the password to your account, your email or your airline booking.
- One-time codes. A code sent to your phone by a bank or a website is for you alone.
- Full medical history. Describe the practical need, such as a wheelchair or help with bags, not the diagnosis. Our guide to describing practical assistance rather than private history shows how.
If any of these are requested in connection with a transfer, stop and check through the account or the booking team’s published contact details before replying.
Where payment happens, and what the driver may be paid
Knowing where money is supposed to move is the best protection against a message that asks for it elsewhere.
Pilgrim Taxi takes full payment online at checkout. After payment, the account shows the payment and, where relevant, a line reading “Cash due to driver”, with the amount in the booking currency, to be paid directly to the driver. For example, an approved new pickup time carries a £5 rescheduling fee, converted into the booking currency and added to the cash paid to the driver at pickup. The checkout also states that any cash amount is a separate payment made directly to the driver and is not covered by any refund from us.
So there are two places to check whenever money is mentioned: the checkout and the account. If a message asks you to pay anything that does not appear in either, treat it as suspicious until the booking team confirms it through the account or the published contact page.
Requests that should make you stop
Scams rarely look like scams. They look like helpful reminders. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre lists the tell-tale signs of a scam message: authority, where criminals pretend to be important people or organisations; urgency, with a limited time to respond and threats of negative consequences; emotion; scarcity; and current events or specific times of year. A pilgrimage season has all of these ready-made.
Messages to question, whatever name they use:
- “Your driver is waiting, pay the balance now by bank transfer to secure the car.”
- “Send a copy of the passports so we can register the pilgrims for transport.”
- “Your booking will be cancelled in one hour unless you confirm your card details.”
- “Reply with the code we have just sent you to verify the booking.”
- “Special Ramadan offer, only three cars left, pay today.”
The NCSC’s advice is to contact the organisation directly, using official contact details from its website rather than any in the message. For a transfer, that means signing in to your account and reading the booking there, or using the contact details on the Pilgrim Taxi site, never the number or link in the message.
What the driver sees, and what you check on the day
Privacy works in both directions. The driver needs enough to find the right people, and you need enough to find the right car.
The driver works from the journey: the pickup place, the destination, the time, the lead traveller’s name, the contact number and your notes. That is why it pays to get those right and to keep them free of anything else. There is no reason for a driver to hold a copy of anyone’s passport or card to carry out a transfer. In other words, the personal details for an airport transfer are the ones already in the booking. If something changes, such as a contact number, tell the booking team through the proper channel rather than sending documents to anyone.
For your side, the account shows the driver’s name once a driver is assigned. The driver-assigned email gives the vehicle registration, meeting or waiting instructions, and a link to view the vehicle photo securely in the account. Before getting in, compare the name and registration with those records. If someone approaches the travellers claiming to be their driver and the details do not match, they should not get in, and should call the organiser or the booking team.
Tell elderly relatives this plainly before they fly: the right car is the one whose registration matches the sheet, and nobody needs their passport or bank card to drive them to the hotel.
Reviews, public posts and community groups
After a good journey, families often want to thank the driver publicly or recommend the service in a community group. That is welcome, but think about what the post shows. A photo of the confirmation or the account page may carry a booking reference, a phone number or a traveller’s full name. A picture of the car may show its registration next to your parents.
Write the recommendation in your own words, without references, numbers or screenshots, and leave the travellers’ faces and names out unless they are happy to be shown. The same goes for complaints: set out the facts through the site’s complaints procedure rather than posting booking details in public.
Where to send changes and questions
A change sent to the wrong place is both ineffective and a privacy leak. Keep booking changes in the booking channels.
- A new pickup time: request it in your account, on a paid booking, before the pickup time. It stays pending until the booking team approves it; a rejected request costs nothing.
- A cancellation or refund request: send it from the account with a reason. Bookings are subject to our cancellation terms (free cancellation with a full refund up to 48 hours before pickup; inside 48 hours the deposit element of the price is kept) if the customer cancels; if we or the transport partner cancel or cannot supply the journey, the customer receives a full refund for the affected journey. The full terms are in our cancellation and refund policy.
- Anything else, such as place, destination, passengers or vehicle: contact the booking team, because these cannot be changed online.
Do not send changes through the driver, through social media comments or through a relative’s chat with someone who “knows a driver”. A driver cannot change the booking, and a public comment shares booking details with strangers.
Keeping travel documents private in family chats
Family chats are where most oversharing happens, usually with the best of intentions. Someone posts the passport pages “so everyone has a copy”, or forwards the whole airline booking with the reference and email address visible.
Keeping travel documents private in family chats does not mean keeping the family uninformed. It means sharing the facts rather than the documents:
- post the flight number, date and landing time, not the airline booking confirmation;
- post the hotel name, address and phone, not the hotel voucher with payment details;
- post the transfer details from the confirmed booking, not a screenshot of the account;
- keep passport copies, if you keep any, in a private place such as your own secured files, not a group.
Our guide to one final pickup message for the family chat shows a template that carries everything the travellers need and nothing more.
Large groups
Community and extended family groups can have dozens of members, some you barely know. Treat them as public. Ask general questions there if you like, but share booking details only with the people travelling and the people helping them.
Screenshots and redaction
A screenshot often shows more than you meant: an email address, a booking reference, a phone number, a payment line, the corner of another message. Before you send one, look at the whole image, not just the part you care about.
If a picture really helps, crop to the useful part and cover anything unrelated. Keep the original privately for your own records. Better still, send the facts as text, which can be read, copied and searched, and leaves nothing behind that you did not choose to share.
For quotes, a screenshot also loses context. The basket can email a secure review link so another person can check the journey before one person pays. Our guide to what a quote screenshot leaves out explains the difference.
Relatives who help: access without passwords
Helping relatives rarely need your account. They need to see the plan.
- Before payment, email them the secure review link from the basket.
- After confirmation, send them the journey details as text.
- If they will take over the organising, plan a handover rather than sharing a password. Our guide to a different relative taking over the planning covers how to do that cleanly.
If a password has been shared in the past, change it once the trip is over.
If you have already shared something you should not have
Mistakes happen. Act quickly and calmly.
- Card details sent in a message: contact your bank or card provider straight away using the number on the back of the card.
- A suspicious email received: the NCSC’s page on reporting a scam email explains how to forward it for investigation, and advises not clicking any links in it.
- Money lost to fraud: the NCSC directs victims in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to Report Fraud, and those in Scotland to Police Scotland on 101.
- A password shared: change it, and change it anywhere else you use the same one.
- A passport image posted in a group: delete it, ask members to delete their copies, and contact the passport issuing authority for advice if you think it has been misused.
Worked example: the Hussain family’s shopping list of documents
Amina Hussain in Birmingham is booking transfers for her parents, Saleem and Zubeida, and her aunt. Her cousin, trying to help, sends her a folder: three passport scans, the airline booking, the hotel voucher and a photo of her father’s bank card “in case the taxi company needs it”.
Amina opens the ride finder and books from her own notes. The search takes the airport, the hotel, the date and time in Saudi local time, three adults, four large cases and three cabin bags, and a wheelchair requirement for her aunt. At checkout she enters her mobile, and, because the booking is for someone else, her father’s name as spelt on his passport, his phone and her own number as the emergency contact. She adds the flight number from the ticket and a note: “Hotel tower name, hotel phone, one traveller uses a wheelchair.” She pays online.
She deletes the cousin’s folder from her downloads and asks him to delete the card photo from his phone.
Two days later a text arrives: “Pilgrim transport: send passport copies today or the booking is cancelled.” Amina does not reply. She signs in, sees the booking reads Confirmed with no requests or cash lines she did not expect, and forwards the message as the NCSC advises. In the family chat she posts only the pickup date, time, place, hotel and the driver details once assigned.
Checklist: what to share when booking Umrah transport
- Write down what the journey needs: names, mobile, route, date, time, passengers, bags, flight number, practical needs.
- Use the booking form for booking details, not messages or social media.
- Enter card details only at checkout.
- Never send passport or visa scans, card numbers, passwords or one-time codes for a transfer.
- Describe health needs as practical requirements, not history.
- Share facts as text in family chats, not documents or account screenshots.
- Use the secure review link for relatives who need to check before payment.
- Check any message about money against the account and the checkout.
- Contact the booking team only through the account or the site’s published details.
- After the trip, remove shared copies and change any password that was shared.
A transfer needs very little personal information, and that is a good thing. Open the Pilgrim Taxi ride finder, enter the journey and the contacts, and keep everything else private.