Wego, the leading travel search site in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, continues to resonate with Middle East and North African (MENA) travellers. Speaking just prior to the 2015 Arabian Travel Market, General Manager of Wego Middle East and North Africa, Mamoun Hmedan says the region is booming.
“Wego has experienced record breaking growth from Middle East markets over the last year,” said Hmedan. “In the first quarter of 2015 we grew monthly active users from MENA by 209% and sessions by 364% compared to Q1 2014, and this extremely rapid growth has come off an already very substantial base.”
In Q1 2015 the value of the booking referrals sent by Wego to airline, hotel and online travel agency partners from users in the Middle East was $24M per day or $720M per month.
“Wego’s initial success in the Middle East was driven largely by our early localisation of our websites and mobile apps into Arabic,” Hmedan added. “Since the 2014 Arabian Travel Market we’re pleased to have welcomed many new Middle East based travel partners into the Wego marketplace and the positive response from users to these local brands has continued to fuel our growth.”
In the last year, Wego MENA has welcomed local partners including Flydubai, Air Arabia, Almosafer, Dnata, Jaz Hotels, Travco, Destinia, Aljazeera Airways, Royal Jordanian, Ethiopian Airlines, and Cleartrip MENA.
“The emergence of the smartphone as the preferred device for Middle East users to book flights and hotels online has been the other remarkable market development over the last year,” commented Hmedan. “More than 75% of the bookings Wego drives in MENA start on a mobile device and most of those are now made by users of the incredibly popular Wego iOS and Android apps.”
The “Wego Flights & Hotels” mobile app remains in the top positions in both iTunes and Google Play stores throughout MENA, and enjoys the most popularity in Saudi Arabia where it has consistently held the #1 travel app position on iTunes since launch.
According to a presentation by Google at the WebInTravel Middle East 2015 conference, mobile is the fastest growing platform in MENA and accounted for 41 per cent of all travel search queries in Dec 2014.
“We look forward to meeting industry colleagues at the Arabian Travel Market in early May and invite partnership discussions from other companies active in these exciting and rapidly growing online travel markets,” Hmedan concluded.