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UAE residents to gain access to leading travel metasearch site Wego, comparing over 500 airlines and 350,000 accommodation options
- Wego is experiencing very strong growth in visits from across the Middle East
- Wego.ae is the first in a series of new sites to be launched for Arabic speaking countries
- Wego appoints Dubai-based BizGate as their Middle East Representative
Dubai, April 30th, 2012 – Global travel metasearch company Wego, at the Arabian Travel Market today announced the public availability of www.wego.ae, the first flights and hotels metasearch website created for UAE residents and available in both Arabic and English. For the first time UAE residents will be able to search and compare prices and availability for flights and hotels from both travel agents as well as airlines and hotels directly, together in one place.
Wego.ae offers a comprehensive view of over 500 full-service and low cost carriers, as well as 350,000 accommodation options of all varieties, with search results ranked in order of those most favoured by other GCC residents. Powerful yet simple filters can be applied to match every search criteria and budget, translating into enormous time savings and producing more relevant search results.
Wego sees metasearch as an essential tool in helping travellers in this region make sense
of the increasingly complex travel market.
“Because of the Gulf’s strategic position between Europe and Asia and the success of airport mega-hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, residents are blessed with a very wide array of airline choices when travel planning,” explained Ross Veitch, Wego CEO & Co-Founder. “We believe Wego is the perfect tool to check prices, availability and schedules across this multitude of options to save time and pay less for their trip.”
Today’s announcement focused on the launch of the UAE site, but residents of other Arabic speaking nations will not have to wait long for travel metasearch services customised for their own travel needs as the company is putting the final touches to localised sites serving users in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt.
Even prior to the launch of the Arabic sites the company has seen extremely strong growth
from users across the region on its global english site wego.com. Visits from the UAE are up 49% quarter on quarter, Qatar is up 69% and growth from Saudi Arabia is even higher off what is an already fairly significant base for the company.
Travellers from this region are most frequently comparing flights within the GCC and into
India, Europe, Southeast Asia, the United States and China, though the long-tail of destination searches is exceptionally diverse reflecting business and leisure travel interests in every corner of the globe.
To accelerate growth in the region Wego has appointed as their commercial representative Dubai-based BizGate Marketing & Consultancies Services LLC, a dynamic, boutique marketing and consultancy agency specialising in travel and led by travel industry veteran Mohamad Ibrahim Masri.
“We are very excited to be working with Wego to deliver products designed specifically for travellers in this region,” commented Masri. “I am confident that Arabic as well and English speaking consumers here will quickly embrace Wego as the smarter way to shop for travel with so many options to choose from. For this innovative technology, the time has come.”
The company is now in the process of integrating additional regional airlines and hotel
groups directly into Wego, so that they can enjoy direct access to the millions of travellers using the metasearch tool every month, not just on wego.ae, but also across the global network of Wego travel sites. Veitch is attending Arabian Travel Market this week to meet
with partners.
He concluded:
“We are delighted to be in Dubai to meet industry partners and to launch wego.ae, reflecting our commitment to this region and to a programme of rapid expansion that will see travellers across the Gulf enjoy the benefits of customised flight and hotel metasearch technology.”
About Wego
Considered the ideal site to begin planning travel, Wego.com gives travellers a complete view of available flights, hotels, travel packages and deals from hundreds of travel websites in the time that it takes to search just one. The latest pricing, availability and reviews are shown, with tools provided to select the cheapest days to fly and to find the best hotel offers. Travellers then simply click through to the partner websites to book. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives of InterContinental Hotels Group, Yahoo!, Priceline and ZUJI. Investors include News Digital Media and Tiger Global. In 2010, Wego merged with HolidayIQ.com, an established India based travel content and community site. For more information, please visit http://www.wego.com/about
About BizGate
BizGate “BG” is a dynamic, boutique marketing and consultancy agency strategically
located in Dubai. BG started its activities in 2007, concentrating on travel, tourism and leisure marketing & Consultancies. Specialized in travel and hospitality PR and recognized for offering more than just business transaction and above all committed to build trust relationship. This accomplishment is based on our understanding of the needs and objectives of our clients. Our creative and integrated approach to marketing helped international companies to launch their business successfully, develop their brand, increase market share, improve your communications and help you get an advantage over your competitors. For more information please visit us on www.bizgate.info.
WEGO.AE – UNDER THE HOOD
Searching Flights:
- Over 500 airlines are presented, including the major GCC carriers such as Emirates, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways and many more.
- Online travel agent (OTA’s) include Expedia, ebookers.com, Airfare.com and Travelation with more partnerships to be revealed soon.
- AJAX powered filters, sliders and dynamic sort options provide a multitude of defined flight options narrowed down to a manageable list, suited to personal choices and needs. Once selection is made the user is directed to providers website to complete the booking.
Searching Accommodation:
- Accommodation providers include online industry giants such as Agoda, Expedia and Booking.com as well as hotel chains InterContinental Hotels Group, Accor, Starwood, and more.
- Hotel Reviews are aggregated from multiple sites and summarised showing users a consensual view at a glance.
- Users’ most popular hotel choices both domestically and internationally are clearly displayed, gathered from Wego’s data mining activity based on millions of UAE-based travel movements over the past year.