JAKARTA, February 29th, 2012 – Wego, a leading global travel metasearch company, today announced the official launch of Wego Indonesia (http://www.wego.co.id), an online travel metasearch engine designed specifically for Indonesian travellers in both Bahasa Indonesia and English.
Wego Indonesia provides Indonesians travelling both domestically and internationally with a localised site to compare the price and availability of flights and hotels across hundreds of different travel sites quickly and simply, so travellers can save time, pay less and travel more. Wego Indonesia is one of 35 international sites recently launched by Wego as part of its global expansion.
“Wego has seen very strong growth from the Indonesian market over the last 18 months which more than justified our early decision to invest heavily in localising our services for Indonesians,”
explained Ross Veitch, Wego Co-Founder & CEO.
“Indonesia is among the fastest growing online travel markets in the world today, and with the launch of Wego Indonesia, we are poised to play a key role in developing this market further and assist millions of Indonesians realise their travel dreams.”
Wego entered the Indonesian market relatively early through partnerships with major portals Detik and Yahoo! Indonesia, both of whom added the Wego metasearch facility to their sites. The new Wego Indonesia website has been in beta testing mode since late December 2011, prior to which most Indonesians used the English global site, www.wego.com.
Recent observations of Indonesian market trends include:
– Domestic flight clicks – a measure of intent to buy air tickets which grew by over 400 per cent year-on-year, with users most frequently referred to Lion Air, Batavia Air, Garuda Indonesia, Sriwijaya Air and AirAsia Indonesia flights.
– International flight clicks – grew by 180 per cent year-on-year with Tiger Airways, AirAsia Indonesia, Malaysia Airlines, Lion Air, Garuda Indonesia together with ValuAir and Jetstar, the largest beneficiaries of this growth. Singapore scored as the primary international destination with Tiger Airways.
– Most Popular Domestic Destinations – Within Indonesia flights to Padang, Balikpapan, Banjarmasin, Malang, Kupang, Bengkulu, Jayapura, Kendari and Palu, witnessed seven and up to eight-fold increases. Indonesia’s most popular destination Bali tripled in search volume year-on-year.
“This tends to suggest that the domestic market is beginning to mature as travellers seek out new destinations beyond Bali,”
observed Graham Hills, General Manager Indonesia.
“The launch of the Bahasa Indonesia site along with contributions from an exceptionally creative and innovative Indonesian team has resulted in this successful opportunity for Wego,” he added. “The new design and strong local content is clearly resonating with both business and leisure travellers.”
For media enquiries, please contact:
Caroline Bye
Press Office
Wego Pte Ltd
Tel : +65 6438 8242
Email: [email protected]
Graham Hills
General Manager
Wego Indonesia
Tel: +62 812 8689 0676
Email: [email protected]
Wego Indonesia
Wego’s Jakarta office in Kuningan will be headquarters of the Indonesian team led by General Manager, Graham Hills (@grahamhills) and also home to global teams developing mobile site and applications, social applications and web development. Wego is currently recruiting product managers, designers and developers to be based in Jakarta.
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 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
Wego.co.id features – Under the hood
Searching Flights:
– Prominent airline searches include Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Tiger Airways, Sriwijawa Air, Indonesia AirAsia Indonesia, Batavia Air, Jetstar, Valuair, Qantas, Lufthansa, Emirates, Malaysia Airways and many more.
– Online travel agent (OTA’s) searches includes Expedia, AsiaTravel and Agoda 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.
– DateWise™ Fare Finder is the latest tool developed by Wego in response to user needs and suggestions, displaying airfare prices across a time period in a visual, graphical format, highlighting the cheapest day to travel in that time frame.
Searching Accommodation:
– Accommodation providers include online industry giants such as Agoda, Expedia, Hotels.com 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.
– Indonesian user’s most popular hotel choices both domestically and internationally are clearly displayed, gathered from Wego’s data mining activity based on millions of Indonesian travel movements over the past year.
Travel Deals and Community:
Wego has a highly experienced team of travel editors who scour the Internet seeking the best travel deals and the most valuable and interesting stories for Indonesian travellers. A continual and timely communication of deals and stories is shared with the Wego community through multiple outlets including the following:
– Twitter – @WegoID – https://twitter.com/#!/wegoid
– Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/wego.indonesia
– Deals Section – http://www.wego.co.id/deals