BANGALORE, July 24th 2012 – Wego, Asia/Pacific’s leading travel metasearch site has tracked the data trails of 50,000 Indian travellers looking to pack their bags and enjoy or escape the monsoon season with hotel and resort deals online.
Indian travellers are currently using wego.co.in to compare hotel options at over 700 national and 900 overseas destinations to find the best airfares and rates on offer. Their choices give Wego a real-time view of the nation’s intentions and tastes. Discounting the business centres from the study, it appears the places most in demand are those providing the greatest change of scene: the true definition of a getaway.
Two-thirds of the hotel searches are for travel within India. Of those, one in twenty favour Goa accommodation which parties on through the rainy season, despite many of the beachfront properties being closed. Wego shows the reduced rates of the hundreds still open and availability at those bookable online.
Wego is also seeing Lonavala hotels jump to 3 per cent of the total as one of the most popular hill stations. The Lonavala 4-star Fariyas Resort there, close to the Bhaja Caves, is gaining most attention. Ooty, the ‘Queen of hill stations’ in Nilgiris district is accounting for 2 per cent with the more modest Vinayaga Inn the most popular at a little over Rs 600 a night. The leading resort property there is the 3-star Sterling Fern Hill. The largest hill station in the Sahyadri range at Mahabaleshwar is seeing another 2 per cent.
Also bubbling up is Manali in Himachal Pradesh, the staging post for varied treks, at another 2 per cent. Manali is on the road to Ladakh for river-rafting, rock climbing, mountaineering and for nearby Leh. Notably, Kochi resort searches in magical Kerala are also up, doubling month on month.
From analysis of the international hotel searches, it is clear that impact of the Rupee’s devaluation has not dented India’s enthusiasm for regional and long-haul escapes. A third of the 50,000 sample group are looking overseas. In wego.co.in Singapore dominates outright, though the Lion City is as much a leisure destination as hub for corporate India. 8 per cent are searching Thailand, of which half are checking Bangkok accommodation and with Pattaya currently out-ranking Phuket amongst the other Thai hotspots.
Malaysia is attracting 7 per cent of which a quarter of those online are looking to relax in Langkawi. Wego India’s favourite hotel there is the luxurious Berjaya Langkawi Resort. Of the 3 per cent heading for Indonesia, Bali is the top target with some great offers, including the Ayana Resort & Spa much favoured by users of the site. Another 2 per cent are heading in the opposite direction for the glamour of Dubai at this time of year. Not surprisingly, searches for London have exceeded all of popular Switzerland, due to Olympic fever.
What is clear to Jackson Fernandez, General Manager of Wego India is that travellers are much more aware of the multitude of travel choices available to them through the monsoon period – and are intensifying their searches online to find the perfect deal.
Fernandez explained:
“the aim of our metasearch technology, in comparing hundreds of different travel partners’ products, is to help travellers discover their options and to make their trips more affordable. There’s a lot of competition and so the savings in time and money are significant.”
Wego compares over 350,000 accommodation options and 600 full-service and low costs airlines. Search results can be filtered in a variety of ways to meet users’ needs, with the hotels automatically ranked in order of their popularity with other Indian travellers. Wego also aggregates hotel reviews for an impartial view.
The company operates 40 country sites around the world. Wego India is available in 11 national languages. For more information, click: www.wego.co.in.
For more information, please contact:
Priyanka Sachdeva
Value360 Communications – An affiliate of Huntsworth
Tel: +91 9899766011
Email: [email protected]
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. A traveller 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