The company soft launched these 34 country sites, including Singapore (see report), in December 2011. Since then, traffic has been up 22% till January 2012, despite the typically lull periods of Christmas and Chinese New Year.
Localisation of the new websites include elements such as language; default currency reflected; priority for local airlines, travel agents and hotel chains; and sorting of search results by local relevancy.
Wego has attributed the company’s success to the ‘radical’ redesign and the introduction of several new features on the website:
Hotels Popular Search
Based on a 12-month historical data mining exercise, the company found that users preferences can be geographically differentiated. Now, as its default, Wego sorts hotels in a given location based on how popular they are with local users. For example, in Singapore, users pay more attention to hotels that are popular with other Singaporeans.
DateWise™ Fare Finder (see report):
The most frequently requested feature from users is a tool to help those with flexible travel schedules to identify the cheapest dates to fly. Users get to see a graphical illustration of the various flight prices for any given month. This is done across all single or return flights – for all carriers, including budget airlines.
Flight Schedules:
Typically affecting business travellers, the timing of flights is the most critical factor in flight selection. Wego’s new tool shows the schedules for all direct flights worldwide, optionally including codesharing details and, even, listing the aircraft type for each flight.
Popular Destinations:
The data mining exercise has allowed Wego to calculate country-specific lists of the most popular destinations. Wego, then, promotes these destinations on the homepage of each country site.
“The new format and features are clearly resonating with users as we’ve seen much deeper engagement with the localized sites,” commented Ross Veitch, Wego’s new CEO since January. (Former CEO Martin Symes will continue to be involved with Wego as non-executive Chairman and will divide his time between Europe and Asia.)
In Australia, Wego has launched a “travel deals” aggregation site, where the response has been positive. It will bring the concept to Singapore next, where online travel has been seeing much growth.
With 40% of Internet users in Singapore visiting travel sites (about 1.2 million Singaporeans) and 60% of these people checking two or more websites to shop for travel comparatively, Wego sees further potential in growing its home market. Looking at the number of clicks that go through Wego, it was found that Singaporean consumers are still highly price sensitive.
With its site traffic growing at 65% year on year and remembering the roots from whence it began, Wego officially launched Wego Singapore (www.wego.com.sg), specifically customized for the needs of Singapore travel shoppers. The site is available in three languages, English, Bahasa Melayu & Simplified Chinese. A Tamil version is in the works.
The new website has partnerships with well known local players such as Chan Brothers, NewShan and ZUJI Singapore(upcoming). The partnerships aim to make the users’ search findings more familiar and relevant. Searching on Wego.com.sg will ensure that users are assured of finding the best price in the market and getting results that are proven to be popular with other Singaporeans in recent months.
Veitch concluded, “Wego’s mission is to help our users everywhere to save time, pay less and travel more.
