Travel Search Engine Wego Labored in Asia but Found Its Footing in the Gulf States

Despite its name, Wego never went far. Founded in 2005 as Bezurk, Wego was similar in design to many travel price-comparison search companies launched around the same time. Yet the Singapore-based company didn't grab an exit like Kayak, which the Priceline Group bought for $1.8 billion in 2013; or like Skyscanner, which Ctrip acquired for $1.74 billion in 2016; or even like Momondo, which Priceline bought for $550 million a year ago. Wego competed with HotelsCombined to get traction in Southeast Asia but never struck gold. "We were way too early with the metasearch model in southeast Asia," said co-founder and CEO Ross Veitch. "You need a critical mass of suppliers operating at scale to make the marketplace model work. We thought the market would develop faster than it did." Veitch thinks Wego now has a path to scaling up after he and founder Craig Hewett pivoted the company to a mobile-first strategy in the Gulf States — a market relatively underserved by the global giants. Booking.com and TripAdvisor are the only companies ahead of Wego in traffic in the region, according to figures for desktop and mobile for December 2017 from analytics firm SimilarWeb. But Veitch said, "We believe Wego sends a lot more referrals to flight and hotel partners from the Middle East than TripAdvisor does." Between half and two-thirds of Wego's revenue comes from the Middle East and North Africa, the rest from Asia Pacific, the company said. "With the benefit of hindsight, when starting in Asia, we should've built cash cows in the more developed markets first," said Veitch. "Effectively, that's what we're doing in the Middle East," he said. "This nicely profitable market is throwing off cash we can use to subsidize the marketing, engineering, and supplier relationship expenditure in emerging markets." Middle East Pivot In December 2010, Wego launched 34 country sites beyond the handful in Southeast Asia — to see where it might gain traction. It received the best response in the Gulf States. The region had been mostly overlooked by Western and Chinese travel giants. At the time, it only had five or so homegrown online travel agencies — none of which was dominant. Weg