JAKARTA, July 2nd, 2012 – Asia/Pacific’s leading travel metasearch site Wego has more than doubled its investment in Indonesia this year, with the team expected to grow to 50 operating out of the new custom-built Kuningan offices. Jakarta is to be the Centre of Excellence for social media and mobile product development for the company, now six months into a phase of rapid growth.
Starting with the first hire in May last year the team recruited by Indonesia Managing Director, Graham Hills has attracted executives from Indonesia’s top travel, content and media players. Hills is ex Yahoo! Travel and OctopusTravel, two of the content writers are from Media Indonesia, sales personnel include ex Detik and Agoda with developers joining from a range of specialist social and mobile roles. The startup mentality is also being expressed with Valadoo, in which Wego acquired a stake, moving into the open-plan, creative space.
Social Media Team
When it comes to the rate of adoption of social media and its integration into daily life, Indonesia is frequently a leading indicator for what will happen months or years later elsewhere in the world. Wego has therefore chosen to base its Social Media Team in Jakarta. Home to talented social media savvy professionals it is the perfect laboratory for social media experimentation.
The Social Media Team’s immediate focus is on new Wego applications and features that leverage the power of social networks. An example is their use of Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo to present Vaastu, a short film commissioned by Wego to encourage the adventure-seekers who are contributing to the explosion in domestic travel. In Sanskrit, ‘vaastu’ means direction with the metasearch site wego.co.id helping travellers to find it.
Mobile Product Team
Indonesia is also one of the world’s largest mobile markets. It’s growth is driving not just internet usage but engagement levels as well, according to a new study by Yahoo! (Evolving Digital Landscape – Indonesia). Indonesians are now spending 10 hours a week accessing the web on their mobile phone or PDA. Wego sees many Indonesians carrying several devices for different purposes, work-related, for entertainment and for social interaction. Until recently, Indonesia was Facebook’s number #2 market globally with two thirds of those users accessing Facebook only via their mobile device. In many ways Indonesia is already a post-PC internet environment.
Wego is participating in the evolution of this dynamic sector by assembling and basing its specialist mobile team in Jakarta. The company is actively looking for a Mobile Product Manager to work with the marketing, design and development groups in both Jakarta and Singapore and is inviting candidates to check wego.com/jobs. The Wego Mobile Team will be focused on creating best in class mobile apps for Wego’s users worldwide across all leading and emerging mobile platforms.
“Indonesia is a market of high strategic importance to Wego, where we have been investing and seeing great results, but it also serves as a base from which we can produce innovative work in Mobile and Social Media,”
commented Ross Veitch, Wego Co-Founder and CEO. He continued,
“the landscape, the talent available and the proximity to Wego’s global headquarters in Singapore make Jakarta the ideal location for this focussed development activity.”
For media enquiries, please contact:
Caroline Bye
Press Office
Wego Pte Ltd
Tel : +65 6438 8242
Email: [email protected]
Graham Hills
Managing Director
Wego Indonesia
Tel: +62 21 5795 7405
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. 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. For more information, please visit http: www.wego.com/about