Wego CEO and Co-Founder Ross Veitch
Wego, an online travel marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), recently snapped up Travelstop, a business travel and expense management company.
With this acquisition, Wego aims to enter business travel and expense management. The deal will also empower Travelstop to tap into Wego’s regional network and provide enhanced services to its customers.
e27 spoke to Wego CEO and Co-Founder Ross Veitch to learn more about the deal, the post-COVID-19 trends in the travel sector in Southeast Asia and the Travel, and more.
Excerpts:
Can you share insights into how the travel industry has evolved in the MENA region post-COVID-19 and how Wego plans to adapt to these changes?
The MENA region has rebounded strongly and relatively quickly from the COVID-19 shutdown. The Gulf is experiencing a mini-boom from high oil prices. Consumers travel at record levels despite airfares being significantly higher than pre-covid levels.
Also Read: Wego acquires Travelstop to expand into business travel
During the pandemic period, Wego doubled down on product development. We started COVID-19 with our marketplace business but exited it with both marketplace and online travel agency (OTA) businesses. This allows consumers to book directly with Wego and enables us to help our users throughout the entire travel journey end-to-end.
With the acquisition of Travelstop, what trends in business travel and expense management do you foresee becoming more prominent in the post-COVID travel landscape?
Business travellers of today, particularly the younger generations, prefer to book their own travel and make their own choices rather than being forced to have a corporate travel agent do it for them. This generation has grown up with simple-to-use mobile apps and websites and expects the same for their business travel.
Travelstop has been designed to address the needs of this group while overlaying all the special deals, rules, approvals, reporting and duty of care requirements that businesses need.
How does Wego plan to leverage technology and innovation to meet the changing demands of travellers in a post-pandemic world?
From day one, Wego has been focused on solving problems in the travel sector by applying technology. Advances in AI are going to transform all industries. Within the travel industry, Wego will be at the forefront of figuring out how to innovate with the fantastic new toolkit we have at our disposal.
Please discuss some of the unique challenges that Wego might encounter while navigating the MENA market in the context of this new venture.
A challenge but also a massive opportunity is that most business travel in the MENA region is still self-managed or outsourced to an old-school travel agency. This is particularly the case with SMEs. We see an obvious opportunity to migrate these self-managed business travel bookers into Travelstop and then to sign up more travellers or departments within the same company.
How do you plan to address regulatory and cultural differences when offering business travel services in various countries within the MENA region?
Like Southeast Asia, the Middle East is a collection of separate countries, each with its own characteristics, consumer behaviours, regulatory requirements, etc.
Also Read: In SEA, Millennial Muslims in Indonesia are more confident about using AI for travel: HHWT
Wego has been operating in the Middle East for over a decade; indeed, we are now dual-headquartered between Dubai and Singapore. Our early years in SEA were great training for the challenges of the MENA region.
Travelstop has a presence in Southeast Asia. Could you elaborate on the maturity of the business travel and expense management space in this region and how Travelstop’s existing operations fit into Wego’s strategy?
The MENA and APAC regions are relatively under-penetrated in managed business travel and expense management, so they are wide open and ready to be disrupted.
Given the presence of established players in the business travel sector, what competitive advantages does Wego believe it has in Southeast Asia?
We’ve been designing, building and operating websites and apps for nearly 20 years now and will bring everything we’ve learned in the B2C trenches to the challenge of making it surprisingly quick and easy to get your work travel bookings and expense management done.
Also Read: Use Triphie to get highly customised itineraries for your next trip to Malaysia
Can you provide insights into the integration plan for Travelstop within Wego and how this will enhance the overall user experience for business travellers?
We’ll have more to announce about this shortly, but many synergies are obvious, for example, sharing suppliers across Wego and Travelstop.
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Image Credit: Wego
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