Singapore, 23 January, 2013 – Wego, the leading travel metasearch site in the Asia Pacific and Middle East today revealed some interesting insight into travel over the Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year capitals Singapore and Hong Kong are showing record numbers of hotel searches on Wego for the upcoming holiday. Almost one in five hotel searches were for Singapore from both cities.
Singapore hotels rule
Searches indicate that Singapore travellers this year favour accommodation in their own Lion City as first preference, followed by Batam, Bangkok, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur (in that order). Osaka, Bintan, Bandung and Taichung pushed out popular Bali as new top ten entrants, along with number five Kuala Lumpur. The Indonesian resort island of Bintan is enjoying increased popularity now sharing the same volumes as searches for Bangkok hotels accounting for five per cent of searches.
“Singaporeans are indicating that they either want to stay home, or don’t want to travel too far,”
explained Dean Wicks, Chief Marketing Officer for Wego.
From Hong Kong
Singapore again tops the list for Hong Kong travellers in 2013, their top five hotel searches shifted from second choice Bangkok, Osaka, Seoul and Taipei in 2012, to Okinawa, Macau, Seoul and Hong Kong this year.
“Nine from ten Hong Kong travellers on Wego are choosing festive celebrations outside of the territory, and we could be seeing a reflection from the Gangnam phenomenon in South Korea although it was also popular during Chinese New Year in 2012,”
Wicks added.
Macau and Okinawa were the big movers on the top ten list this year, with Macau barely creeping in during 2012 and now third most searched. Other new destinations on this year’s list for Hong Kong include Nantou City, Kuala Lumpur, Koror, Cebu and Shenzhen.
By Air
From Singapore flights are trending up for Melbourne and Auckland (new entrants in the top ten) with Bangkok and Singapore remaining in the top three as they did in 2012. New flight searches for Yangon and Chennai were also recorded.
Flights out of Hong Kong showed Singapore’s heat a number one attraction and increased interest in Seoul (two), Taipei (three) and Tokyo (four). People are looking beyond Taiwan and being lured to Fuzhou, with Jeju, Fukuoka, Nanning and Koror also in the top ten of searches.
“The data trails left by our Hong Kong users show there is a huge appetite for remote locations and the outdoors,”
Wicks explained.
“Many travellers are discovering Nantou City, the second largest county in Taiwan renowned for its spectacular mountainous terrain.”
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For more information contact:
Anita Duffin
Press Office
Tel: + 62 812 3792 0968
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.wego.com
About Wego
Wego.com is APAC and MENA’s leading travel metasearch engine, operating in over 50 markets worldwide and used by millions of travellers to save time, pay less and travel more. The company provides powerful yet simple to use tools that help travellers research trips, compare prices and book travel online. Wego shows users an unbiased and channel neutral view of travel prices, providing users with a choice of booking direct with a hotel or airline, or via an OTA or aggregator site. In Q3-2012 Wego referred in excess of $1.2 Billion of potential bookings to the websites of its travel partners. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives of Yahoo!, InterContinental Hotels Group, Priceline and ZUJI. Shareholders include Tiger Global Management, News Digital Media and OWW Capital Partners. For more information, please visit https://www.wego.com/about.
