- Tiger Airways, Jetstar Asia, Indonesia Air Asia and Lion Air making gains
- Taiwan, Shanghai and Tokyo slide as Singaporeans stay closer to home
- Tsunami effect on Tokyo traffic and fares
SINGAPORE – Given all the deals and disruption in the travel market over recent months, what have Singaporeans been searching for online? Wego.com has taken a snapshot of 50,000 users’ flight choices, selected while searching its own and its partners’ websites across the Lion City. The results, compiled from a sample study this July, make for interesting reading.
If the budget airlines at Changi Airport seem busier, it is due to huge uptake of low cost fares. Tiger Airways and Jetstar Asia accounted for a quarter of all flight selections made, with Indonesia AirAsia and Lion Air displacing full-service brands in the top 10 airline rankings. Tiger Airways alone grew its share of Wego.com and partner searches by 6 percentage points year-on-year.
Most frequently selected airlines
Source: Wego Travel Insights, comparing July 2010-July 2011 selections across Wego.com and its partner sites.
Cathay Pacific moved up to third place in the rankings, ahead of Singapore Airlines. This was largely attributable to its aggressive pricing on the Singapore-Tokyo route in the period following the March natural disaster in Japan. Cathay Pacific increased its share of selections from 4 to 36 percent year-on-year, at the expense of non-stop flights from Delta (formerly Northwest), United and ANA.
The low cost carriers are clearly stimulating growth in travel to closer to home destinations with Jakarta and Phuket climbing the top 10 destinations list at the expense of Shanghai and Tokyo, despite volumes of searches to both these destinations also rising. And, with Seoul ousting London for 10th position, it’s intra-Asia all the way.
Most frequently searched-for flight destinations
Source: Wego Travel Insights, comparing July 2010-July 2011 selections across Wego.com and its partner sites.
There were some notable downward shifts in pricing as well. With the budget airlines firmly established on the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur route, almost two-thirds of flights selected were priced below S$50 this July compared with half in July 2010. Also, two-thirds of Hong Kong selections were below S$300 compared with only 30% last year, driven by both capacity increases and more low cost airline frequencies.
Martin Symes, CEO at Wego explained: “There are many factors at play, but it is clear from the numbers that the budget carriers have hit on a winning strategy in Singapore. Their next challenge is establishing brand loyalty – as more competition approaches this dynamic outbound market.”
Wego Travel Insights will look next at Asia’s hotel market, publishing analysis from its sites in a fresh report due out in the fourth quarter 2011.
For more information, please contact:
Chief Executive Officer
Martin Symes at [email protected]
About Wego Travel Insights
Wego Travel Insights represent the compiled data and analysis of travel searches conducted on travel comparison site Wego.com and partner websites within the region. These sites include MSN, Yahoo!, eBay, Via Singapore, Detik Indonesia and News.com.au.
This edition is based on a sample size of 50,000 searches conducted in Singapore in July 2011 and measures two points of customer contact. The first is when customers key their travel search queries into Wego’s search engine. Based on Wego’s results generated by travel partners, it then measures the travel options chosen to best suit their needs.
Wego’s results are compiled from various travel partners such as Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia, Asia Travel, Priceline as well as all major full service and low cost airlines.
About Wego
Wego.com allows travellers to search for flights, hotels, packages, travel deals and travel research across 130+ travel websites in the time that it normally takes to search just one. Wego searches travel websites in real-time so that the latest pricing and availability are shown. Travellers are then linked through to partner websites to book. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives from Intercontinental Hotels Group, Yahoo!, Priceline and ZUJI. Investors include News Digital Media and Tiger Global. In November 2010, Wego merged with HolidayIQ, an Indian based travel content and community site.
For more information, please visit: https://www.wego.com/about