Martin Symes

Q: Why the name change from Bezurk to Wego?
Bezurk was quirky and irreverent but just too damn hard to remember, spell and type; especially given our pan-regional aspirations including non-English speaking markets.

Q: I take it that the name change will be more than cosmetic? What other changes are you planning to take Wego to the next level?
Loads of new features and functionalities on Wego versus Bezurk including showing all inclusive fares (ie with taxes, fuel surcharges, service fees etc), schedules, airfares only search etc. Also a bunch of new partners (ie travel suppliers) either launched or about to launch and soon we will add car rental and packages search.

Q: How is business currently? What trends are you seeing in the travel search area?

Given that we haven't spent any money on marketing yet, Singapore is still our biggest market (this will change very soon!) and continues to grow; we have more than doubled our traffic ex SIN from January to April this year. Users are giving very positive feedback on both our business and the travel search engine model in general. We have very strong support from our hotel suppliers and many OTA's in the region and the airlines we are talking to are becoming more and more receptive to the model.

Q: You've said you don't like the term “travel meta-search”. How would you then describe yourself?
I have no idea what meta-search actually means! We call ourselves a "Travel Search Engine"; basically we are a comparison shopping site for travel products.

Q: How has News Corp's investment influenced the business plan?
Obviously being funded allows us to grow the business faster; invest more in product development and expand regionally - all of which we are now actively working on. News has been great; very supportive and giving us full access to all their internal resources and expertise.

Q: With OTAs now also going into advertising, it seems there is more competition for the advertising dollar from all sides – traditional media, digital media, OTAs, Wego ... are we seeing a convergence of advertising and marketing channels? And how should marketers deal with all that?
First of all there seems to be a growing shift towards online media eg currently major airlines like SQ, QF and CX are all advertising product innovations and brand heavily through targeted online display ads.

Travel advertisers like working with Wego/travel search engines because we do a lot of the work in the shopping phase in our environment and send them only highly qualified, ready to buy users. They consistently report that our traffic has significantly higher conversion rates than traffic referred from generic search engines.

Our view is that there are multiple channels in which to get product to the market and all play an important role. Our niche is in sourcing and qualifying customers at the more the price sensitive, brand indifferent end of the market and introducing them to travel suppliers which they might otherwise not have thought of using.

Q: How do you see the Wego model evolving?
We're all totally focused on the next 12-18 months which is all about execution; refining the product, getting it rolled-out into multiple markets across Asia Pacific and proving our value to consumers and suppliers.