CEO Corner : Wego and their Indonesian expansion plan

Wego, a meta-search engine for travelers officially launch their service today in Indonesia and announce their global expansion plan. They held a press event today at Hotel Indonesia Kempinsky, and although their newly-appointed CEO Ross Veitch couldn't join because of illness, Dailysocial managed to talk to Veitch via email.

In this interview, we talked about online travel, Indonesian market and Wego's plan to expand globally and locally. Check out our interview with Ross Veitch below.

Can you elaborate a bit about you, your background and how you founded Wego?

I was born in Australian and have always been something of a geek with an interest in computers and the BBS scene as a kid. At 18 I deferred my university studies and instead went off travelling overseas. A few years passed and I never did actually start university. I've lived and worked in London, Melbourne, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and then to Singapore in 1998 when Yahoo! offerred me a job as the head product guy for Southeast Asia. During my time at Yahoo! I was exposed to the travel metasearch business in Europe and the US which planted the seed for Wego. My friend and co-founder Craig Hewett was similarly exposed to this business model when he worked at Intercontinental Hotels Group and we put our heads together and came up with the plan for Wego. We thought because of the very fragmented nature of Asian travel markets and the rapid growth of online travel that this part of the world was perfect for travel metasearch. We were possibly a little early in retrospect but it's far better to be early than late!

Why you decide to expand to Indonesia?

Initially it wasn't really a very conscious thing. Years ago a large number of Indonesians started using our english language wego.com site and it got to the point where there was obviously demand for what we offer. As a company headquartered nearby in Singapore we're obviously quite familiar with Indonesia as a massive emerging market for travel and so about 2 years ago we set ourselves the goal of becoming the #1 online travel player in Indonesia.

Indonesian young market is still offline-oriented. How do you think Wego can deliver the balance?

Whether a user ends up booking online or offline is something we are actually agnostic about. We work with travel agents, hotels and airlines who support online, offline and hybrid booking & payment models. What's important is that when a traveler comes to Wego.co.id we show them the best prices, the widest range of products and all the available booking options so they can choose what's best for them.

Indonesia has a big market for budget traveller, not 5 star hotels but hostels, villas etc. How Wego capture this market?

On Wego we have a very wide range of accommodation including a large number of hostels, backpackers, homestays and budget hotels to help our users stretch their travel budgets further. When we've done datamining to analyse the accommodation preferences of our Indonesian users we actually see a very wide range. Yes there is a big budget section but we also see a lot of demand for business and luxury hotels so we're clearly reaching quite a broad cross section of the Indonesian traveller market.

Which company you consider as competitor? And what does Wego have in advantage compared to other competitors?

We're really competing with every other company that is fighting for the attention of travellers online. As in other markets, this means we're often competing with our travel partners, which creates quite an interesting dynamic. Ultimately though, we're all working to grow the online travel market so the more players that enter the market the better. The advantages Wego has: 1. Great product that is 100% localized for the Indonesian market 2. Fabulously talented and dedicated team in Indonesia 3. Big distribution partnerships with Detik and Yahoo! Indonesia 4. Travel industry partnerships with pretty much all of the important players in Indonesia 5. Early mover advantage

What do you expect with the official launch in Indonesia?

With the official launch if we're successful at getting the word out about Wego Indonesia I expect to see a pretty big jump in traffic to wego.co.id and an increase in the velocity of our business generally in Indonesia. We're also trying to get the word out that Wego is hiring in Jakarta for both our local and global teams. We're looking for 1) frontend developers, 2) full stack web developers 3) web designers 4) mobile site & app developers. We just signed a lease on a fabulous space in Menara Palma, Kuningan that will be the new home of Wego in Jakarta. Anybody interested should contact Graham Hills (Wego Indonesia GM) or myself on LinkedIn to find out more.

Any targets you want to achieve both globally and locally?

For Indonesia I'd like to finish 2012 with wego.co.id as the clear #1 online travel site for Indonesian and with Wego on it's way to becoming a well known brand amongst online Indonesians. That should keep Graham Hills, Wego's Indonesia GM nice and busy!