Today we’d like to introduce you to Tabatha And Mohamed Hassan.
Hi Tabatha and Mohamed , please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Last year my husband and I sat down one night and asked ourselves a hard question. What do we actually have to offer the world, together?
We’d talked about a food truck. Egyptian food in Texas. We laughed about it. Five kids, two careers, and we’re gonna run a food truck? We let that one go.
But we kept coming back to Egypt.
The last time we visited, we stayed in a beautiful flat that met every American standard of luxury. We had dinner at a restaurant right across from the pyramids. Mohamed has friends who own hotels in Aswan. Uncles connected to properties in Cairo and Giza. Partners who run camel experiences at the pyramids. Photographers. Restaurateurs. Everything!
And I kept thinking, nobody is bridging this the right way.
Most tour companies ship people off on buses. Same wash, rinse, repeat tour. No creativity. No customization. No “let’s find the restaurant that actually fits YOUR taste.”
And nobody is upfront about money. You get a glossy brochure, a vague “starting at” price, and then the real costs show up once you’re already committed. Hidden fees. Surprise upsells the moment you land in Cairo. Add-ons they should have told you about before you wired your deposit. We hated that, so we built the opposite.
So we sat down and wrote everything we had on paper.
His Egyptian network and vendor relationships, the back end that makes luxury possible. My project management, sales, and client experience, the front end that makes it seamless.
We bridged it.
That’s how Ikadolly Private Journeys was born. Custom journeys. Private cars. Private Egyptologists. Hand-picked restaurants. Hot air balloons if you want them. Abu Simbel if you want it. Everything upfront. No surprises. No upsells when you land.
Just Egypt, done beautifully.
We built this from nothing, on a night when the market was uncertain and we needed something that was ours. It still is.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth road? No. Not even close.
The first challenge was the noise. The second we started telling people we were building an Egypt travel company, everyone had an opinion. “Is Egypt even safe?” “Isn’t there a war?” “Why Egypt?” We spent more time than I expected just educating people on the reality of Egypt today versus the headlines they half-remembered from a decade ago. That’s still an everyday part of the job.
The second challenge hit right when things were starting to work. We had momentum. Bookings were coming in. The phone was ringing. Couples were saying yes. And then conflict escalated in the Middle East and everything stopped. Not slowed. Stopped. Inquiries paused. Pipeline froze. People who had been ready to book a month earlier suddenly needed to wait and see. That period tested whether we actually believed in what we were building, because the easy call would have been to walk away and pick a safer business. We didn’t. We kept showing up. We kept answering questions honestly about Egypt’s actual safety situation. We kept nurturing the couples who said “not now” instead of writing them off. And slowly, the bookings came back. Some of our best clients today are people who first reached out during that freeze, watched how we handled it, and came back when they were ready. That stretch taught us that the businesses that survive hard markets are the ones that don’t panic and don’t disappear.
The third challenge was trust. Not just earning it, but proving we weren’t a scam. Think about it from a stranger’s perspective. A brand-new travel company. A website they’ve never heard of. A husband from Egypt they’ve never met. They’re being asked to pay thousands of dollars for a trip months away, in a country they’ve never been to. I would have been skeptical too. We had to learn, fast, how to show up so professionally and so consistently that people felt safe saying yes. We accept all major credit cards. We offer payment plans. Every call, every email, every detail is designed to make booking with us feel as safe as booking with any brand you already know. That’s how trust gets built when you don’t have a fifty-year brand behind you.
The fourth challenge was finding the right partners on the Egypt side and it was humbling in ways I did not expect.
Most ground operators we spoke to were built for volume. Fixed routes. Standard hotels. Rotation restaurants they had been sending tourists to for years. When we came in asking for something different, a lot of them did not know what to do with us.
We were asking questions they had never been asked before.
Can we personally interview every Egyptologist before we assign one to a guest? Because the guide is not a logistics detail they are the entire experience. A great Egyptologist transforms a stone wall into a living story. A mediocre one turns it into a field trip. And in Egypt, anyone can call themselves a tour guide. We have seen it firsthand , where unlicensed hustlers, scammers looking for a quick opportunity, people who memorized a few facts and printed a business card. We do not take that risk. Every guide who works with an Ikadolly guest has been personally interviewed, verified, and approved by Mohamed before they ever stand next to one of our clients.
We even manage what our guides wear. That sounds like a small thing until you realize that presentation is part of the experience. Our guests are paying for luxury. Every touchpoint should reflect that including the person standing next to them at Karnak Temple.
Can chilled, branded bottled water be waiting inside the vehicle before our guests ever open the door? Not handed to them after they are already seated. Waiting. Because first impressions start before anyone says a word.
Can the Grand Egyptian Museum be split across two days for guests who want to actually absorb what they are seeing? Because rushing one of the greatest collections in human history is not luxury it is just expensive rushing.
Can we handpick the restaurants based on the guest in front of us their taste, their pace, their dietary needs instead of sending every single client to the same three spots on rotation, who may not be as clean and leave everyone with an upset stomach. We only use Egypt’s highest rated restaurants and experiences known for consistent service and reviews.
Can we control which bazaars and shopping experiences our guests visit so they are never haggled, pressured, or steered toward commission-driven vendors? We manage that too. Every shopping experience is curated and approved. Our guests browse with confidence, not anxiety.
Can guests who need a slower pace, walking assistance, or more rest time built into their day receive that without it feeling like a compromise or an afterthought?
Most operators pushed back. Too custom. Too detailed. Too far outside the playbook.
We kept looking.
Because those questions are not extras at Ikadolly. They are the baseline. The details that most companies treat as optional are exactly what we were built around. We eventually found partners who understood that. The hunt was long and the no’s were many. But it sharpened everything about who we are and what we refuse to compromise on
The fifth challenge was the one I didn’t see coming. Running a business with your spouse sounds romantic until you’re at the dinner table with five kids and a client in Cairo who needs something confirmed before morning. The line between home and work disappears. Mohamed and I have had to learn, in real time, how to be partners in three different ways at once: in marriage, in parenting, and in business. Some weeks we nail it. Some weeks we don’t. We keep figuring it out.
The sixth is the one every founder knows and nobody talks about enough. The slow nights. The weeks where the phone doesn’t ring. The moments where you wonder if you made the right call. You keep showing up anyway, because the couples who do find you and book with you come home saying it changed their lives, and that’s the fuel that carries you to the next booking.
Smooth road, no. But the right one, absolutely.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Ikadolly Private Journeys?
Ikadolly Private Journeys is a luxury travel company specializing in fully private, custom-designed journeys through Egypt. We are based in McKinney, Texas, with on-the-ground operations in Cairo led by my husband and co-founder Mohamed, whose family has deep roots in Egyptian hospitality.
What we do is simple to say and hard to do well. We design one-of-a-kind Egypt experiences for couples and families who want the real thing. Private guides. Private Egyptologists. Private drivers. Hand-picked hotels and dahabiyas. Restaurants chosen around luxury and consistency, not a standard rotation. Hot air balloons over Luxor at sunrise if you want them. Abu Simbel at dawn if you want it. Every journey is built around the guests taking it, not a brochure.
We offer three tiers: Deluxe, Luxury, and VIP Luxury Premium. Every tier, no matter the price point, gets the same level of care and the same private experience. The difference is in the properties, the add-ons, and the level of exclusivity. Nothing we sell is a group tour. Nothing.
What sets us apart comes down to three things.
But first, here is what most people do not realize about the Egypt travel industry. Most tour operators require a minimum of 16 guests before they will even confirm a booking. You get grouped with strangers on a bus, handed a fixed itinerary, and moved through the same experience everyone else gets. No flexibility. No customization. Your dates work around their schedule, not yours.
We built the opposite of that. We accept a maximum of 6 to 8 trips per month. That is intentional. Every itinerary we design is completely unique and no two journeys are ever the same. Your trip is built around your dates, your pace, and the experiences that matter specifically to you. And every guest has direct access to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week while they are in Egypt. Not a call center. Not a chatbot. Us personally, plus our management team on the ground in Cairo.
Second, we are obsessive about the details other companies treat as optional. Cold bottled water waiting in the car before guests arrive. Egyptologists we have interviewed personally before we assign them. The Grand Egyptian Museum split across two days for guests who want to actually absorb it. Accommodations for guests who need a slower pace or walking assistance, built in without it feeling like an afterthought. These small things are the whole job.
Third, we are transparent about pricing. No vague “starting at” numbers. No surprise upsells when you land in Cairo. No hidden fees. You see the investment upfront and you know exactly what is included before you ever send a deposit. That alone puts us in a different category from most of the industry.
What I am most proud of, brand-wise, is that every couple we have sent to Egypt so far has come home saying it changed them. Not “we had a nice trip.” Changed them. That is the bar we built this business to meet, and we hit it every time.
What I want your readers to know is this. Egypt is the most extraordinary destination on earth, and it deserves to be experienced with care. If you are planning a milestone anniversary, a honeymoon, a bucket-list trip, or a once-in-a-lifetime family journey, we will design it around you, handle every detail, and get out of the way so you can feel it. That is the whole promise of Ikadolly. Private journeys. Thoughtfully curated.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lessons I’ve learned are actually two lessons I had to figure out at the same time.
The first one is that the details are the business. When we started, I thought the big things would make or break us. The journey design. The pricing model. The marketing. Those matter. But they’re not what our clients remember, and they’re not what earns the next booking. What earns it is the small stuff. The pre-day schedule I send to every guest the night before, so they always know exactly what tomorrow looks like before they go to sleep. The fact that Mohamed and I are on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for every client who is on the ground in Egypt. The late-night calls to Cairo vendors from Texas and the early-morning calls from Cairo to sync with our Egypt management team before the day starts. The constant back-and-forth to make sure a car is where it needs to be, a reservation is confirmed, a guide knows the one thing that guest mentioned yesterday at dinner. None of that shows up in a brochure. But when the trip feels effortless, it’s because someone, usually one of us, was awake making sure it did.
The second lesson was harder to accept. Nobody finds you just because you exist. I thought that if we built something genuinely better than what was out there, people would eventually discover it. That’s not how it works. You can have the best product in the world and still be invisible. We had to learn to be found. That meant getting uncomfortable. I started sharing our business in my local mom groups on Facebook and joining groups. I told other moms at school about what we were building. I posted on social media when I didn’t feel like it. I reached out to people I didn’t know. I had to get over the quiet fear that talking about your business too much makes you look pushy, and I had to replace it with the truth, which is that if you don’t tell people you exist, they can’t say yes.
Both lessons boil down to the same thing, actually. You don’t win in this industry by hoping the work speaks for itself. You win by doing the small things so well that your clients feel it without being able to name it, and by having the courage to put yourself out there in the first place so they can find you at all.
Pricing:
- Deluxe Journeys starting at $3,999 per person: fully private, custom-designed, with hand-picked four and five-star accommodations, private guides, private Egyptologists, and private transportation throughout.
- Luxury Journeys starting at $4,500 per person: elevated accommodations, extended experiences, and deeper access to Egypt’s most sought-after properties and moments.
- VIP Luxury Premium Journeys starting at $7,500 per person: our top tier, including luxury dahabiya sailings, top-tier five-star properties, and the highest level of access and personalization we offer.
- What’s always included: private guides, private Egyptologists, private drivers, all major logistics, and concierge support from booking through return flight home.
- What we don’t do: surprise fees, add-on pressure when you land in Cairo, or “starting at” numbers that don’t reflect what you’ll actually pay. Every journey is quoted in full, upfront, before a deposit is sent.Payment: we accept all major credit cards, and payment plans are available for every tier.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ikadollyprivatejourneys.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ikadolly_journeys/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ikadollyprivatejourneys
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ikadolly-journeys
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ikadollyprivatejourneys
Image Credits
JC Photography, Marie Brock Photography
