Rayna Tours

Manoj Tulsani arrived in Dubai in the late 90s after graduating and working in the travel industry for seven years with Safeer Group and Time Machine Group of Companies. By age 28, his passion for travel, curiosity about exotic cultures, and desire to reach more people pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap. He partnered with his friend Kamlesh Ramchandani to explore an uncharted territory in the travel business—one that nobody else was addressing.

The duo kicked off from a small travel outlet in Dubai's Flora Grand Hotel in 2006. They spotted their opportunity immediately: tourists were booking hotels in advance but largely ignoring tour reservations. Rayna's insight was simple but powerful—organize quality tours at low cost for these hotel guests. The concept proved "highly innovative at that time," and they received an "amazing response" that encouraged rapid expansion. Within two years, they opened seven more outlets. By 2009, they had established themselves as a full-service Destination Management Company with their main office in Old Labour Building, Abu Hail Dubai.

Their first customers were literally on their doorstep: hotel guests at Flora Grand Hotel seeking tour experiences. Word-of-mouth and direct relationships drove early growth, amplified by their personal outreach—face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and direct emails to hotel partners.

Rayna invested heavily in owned assets—desert camps, luxury vehicles, yachts, and dhows—which allowed them to guarantee competitive rates and control the customer experience end-to-end. They moved online early, building one of the largest all-inclusive tour booking platforms, and established a presence across social media and a user-friendly mobile app. They also created loyalty programs like R Points for agents and travel operators. On the flip side, they experimented with numerous marketing tactics, with some proving lucrative and others unsuccessful—but each taught them something valuable. What stuck was their "detail-oriented approach with top quality offerings and economic pricing." Traditional marketing (printed ads, phone calls, face-to-face) ran parallel to digital efforts, reflecting a hybrid growth strategy.

Ten years into their journey, Rayna Tours operates across both B2C and B2B verticals with presence in close to 10 countries. Manoj expanded into a holding company structure—Rayna Group—with diversified operations in real estate, construction, and transport. The startup transformed from a boutique to one of the UAE's premier destination management companies, all bootstrapped and self-funded.