Working in booking hotel rooms for attendees of various conferences

A question about working in booking hotel rooms for attendees of conferences, some of which may have forbidden subjects, in which the fatwa centre of IslamWeb answered that such booking is intermediation for a permissible benefit and the salary is lawful, except booking for a conference known or strongly suspected to have a forbidden subject, which is assistance in the forbidden that the employee should decline; he need not investigate conferences whose subject is unknown, and wrongdoing elsewhere in the hotels does no harm, since the contract concerns lodging. ¹

The questioner said he is an executive employee in a company whose task is to research conferences held in various countries, such as the United States, gather information about them, find hotel rates lower than those the organisers offer attendees, and send the information to his superior, after which the transaction passes through stages unrelated to him until these services are sold to people wishing to attend. ¹ His problem, he said, is that some of these conferences may be linked to forbidden matters, such as conferences of alcohol companies or fashion shows with immodest display and nudity, while his task is confined to booking a hotel room, with no promotion of or participation in the conference; he tries to avoid conferences whose nature he doubts, but his manager sometimes assigns him particular conferences and he has to do what is asked, and some of the hotels he books have casinos or bars attached, though he books only rooms. He asked whether there is anything objectionable in his work and whether his salary carries any doubt or prohibition. ¹

The centre answered that researching hotel prices and booking rooms for conference attendees is permissible work, since it is intermediation and guidance to a permissible benefit, the renting of houses and lodgings, and there is no disagreement that renting lodgings is permissible, so guiding people to it is permissible and the salary earned for it is lawful and wholesome. ¹ This principle, however, may be overtaken by something that makes the work forbidden, as when it is known or strongly suspected that a conference's subject is forbidden, such as conferences on marketing and manufacturing alcohol or shows of immodest display; booking hotels for the attendees of such conferences is facilitation of and assistance to them in the forbidden, which God prohibited in al-Ma'ida 2. ¹ As for conferences whose subject is permissible or unknown, there is no blame in booking for their attendees and no duty to research or investigate them, nor is this barred by the presence of wrongdoing in those hotels, since the contract concerns a permissible benefit, lodging, not the wrongdoing attached to those hotels. ¹

The centre ruled that there is no blame on the questioner in continuing in the work so long as he avoids assisting attendance at forbidden conferences; if his manager orders him to book for conferences he knows or strongly suspects to be forbidden, he must decline, since no created being is obeyed in disobedience to the Creator, as the authentic hadith says. ¹ As for his salary, it is not judged forbidden so long as most of his work concerns permissible conferences and tasks; if he has in the past booked for forbidden conferences, the more cautious course is to give a share of his salary in charity to the poor and needy, matching the share of time and effort he spent preparing information on those conferences and booking for them, to clear his conscience and purify his wealth, and then to refrain from it in future. ¹

The fatwa centre of IslamWeb published this fatwa on islamweb.net as no. 539501, dated 21 Jumada al-Ula 1448, 1 November 2026. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.