Wego to Expand to Indonesia, Jakarta Office Opening Soon [INTERVIEW]

Indonesia is not just a tourist destination (Bali is especially popular) but Indonesians love to travel as well. Realizing this opportunity and the increased internet adoption through the country, Travel search service Wego plans to expand to Indonesia by opening an office in Jakarta, in addition to its Australia and Thailand office.

We talked to Graham Hills, General Manager Wego Indonesia, about the company’s plan.

1. Who are your competitors? What makes Wego different?

Wego is the first South East Asia-focused travel meta-search site and launched in 2006 in Singapore. We have a unique position in Asia as we partner with the majority of online travel booking sites in the region enabling our users to search real time rates and availability for hotels and flights from over 150 partner sites.

Having been in the Asian market longer than our competitors gives us a competitive advantage in that we’ve had longer to understand consumers in the region and longer to develop strong relationships with our partners.

2. Wego headquarters is in Singapore and it has offices in Australia and Hong Kong. Why Indonesia too? Why now?

Actually we now have over 100 staff in Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Philippines and India and we’re finalising our incorporation in Indonesia.

Expanding our existing presence in Indonesia was a logical step for Wego. Travel is becoming increasingly more affordable and more and more Indonesian travelers are coming online for travel research and bookings.

Indonesia is a great source of users but also a very important destination with places like Bali being popular with users from around the region.

From a distribution perspective, it’s also important to have people on the ground here to work closely with key partners like Yahoo! and Detik.

3. What approach will you use specifically in Indonesia to win over travellers here to use your service?

We see a lot of potential in Indonesia, but it’s not a market where you can just bring an existing product and expect it to succeed on its own.

For Indonesia we recognise providing our product in the local language is really important as well as making sure our product is easy to use from any device. Mobile is obviously a key consideration for Indonesia and we’re currently making the final touches to our mobile product now. Stay tuned!

It’s also hard to ignore the need for a strong strategy for leveraging social media in Indonesia with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks capturing large percentages of time spent online. Building an active travel community will be critical to our success. We’re already really thankful to our existing fans and followers. They’ve been actively helping us share the benefits of using Wego to find the best travel deals with their friends and family.