When the Assad regime fell on 8 December 2024, Syrian tech entrepreneur Bahila Hijazi was celebrating with friends on the streets of Berlin. Days later, she was thinking about something far more practical: where Syrians abroad would stay when they finally went home.
“A feeling of responsibility emerged,” the 32-year-old Damascus-born entrepreneur says, “that we have to do something, and we need to rebuild the country. It’s not an obstacle. It’s more of a need and an urge. And it felt more real than ever.”
International sanctions kept Syria isolated from global banking and much of the consumer internet for years. Services that make travel easy elsewhere, like short-term rental platforms, payment processing, and account verification, were either unavailable or unreliable in Syria. After 8 December, Syrians coming home had to rely on social media and word-of-mouth to find accommodation. It did not always work.
Hijazi launched Beti Betak, which means ‘my house, your house’ in Arabic. She signed a contract with developers two weeks after Assad’s fall and moved back to Damascus two months later, believing the business needed to be built on the ground. Today, Beti Betak has about 1,000 users on its app and website, mainly in the US and Germany, and offers around 100 housing options in Damascus.
She wasn’t alone. Within months, at least two other diaspora-led platforms launched with the same premise: to build a Syria-ready version of Airbnb and Booking.com. Omar Mahfouz, a Syrian real estate entrepreneur based in Romania, launched Hala In in February 2025. Syrian friends Nour Idelbi in Germany and Hasan in the Netherlands teamed up with European entrepreneurs to build HalaSyria, focused on hotel listings.
Home, Re-Downloaded
The creation of these start-ups after the fall of Assad didn’t just represent new businesses. They signalled a collective desire by Syrians in the diaspora to reposition Syria on the global map, revive tourism in a shattered post-war economy, and redefine the idea of home. After almost 15 years of war and displacement, many Syrians — especially the 30-something entrepreneurs who became refugees as young adults — had stopped imagining Syria as a place they could return to. When the regime fell, that rift broke. For the first time in years, “home” became a live possibility again.
“For many immigrants, especially Syrians, home becomes a complicated question after years of displacement,” Hijazi says.
For her, Beti Betak was a way to reconnect — not just to Damascus, but to the people who stayed.
Hasan hopes that if more people travel to Syria, perceptions of it as a place defined only by war will begin to shift. HalaSyria, he says, was built to “promote Syria as a destination – that if you’re a Syrian you’re welcome to come back, and if you’re a foreigner please come for a visit.”
The Airbnb Gap
Though the founders of these start-ups were aware of the challenges that lay ahead, little could prepare them to work in tech and hospitality in a country still recovering from war and sanctions.
