He may have been too early for Singapore as well as Indonesia – indeed South-east Asia in general – but Ross Veitch, CEO and co-founder of Wego, believes he’s finally hit the right timing in the Middle East.
“We probably went into emerging markets too early,” he said. “We thought they’d develop fater than they did and one of the things we didn’t do was develop cash cows which could subsidise growth in other markets, like Skyscanner did. They turned the UK into a high performing business to subsidise other markets. Maybe we should have started in Australia first and grew that into a cash cow.”
Wego launched in 2005 in Singapore and after nearly 13 years, with the success it’s seeing in the Middle East, Veitch said,“I feel we’re just hitting our stride and taking off.”
It was six years ago when Wego started noticing the pick-up in its conversions in the Middle East and a 10x in basket size difference between South-east Asia and the region. It had tested the waters with an Arabic version, becoming the first localised flight meta in the region.
“There weren’t many well-developed OTAs on the flight side, there was no meta model so we quickly signed up all the airlines to become the place to shop for flights.”
Fast forward six years and the region has now matured with more than 40 OTAs in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) area alone. It has 95% coverage of the airlines in the region and has achieved 16m visitors a month, according to chief commercial officer Dean Wicks who’s relocated to Dubai.
Veitch shakes on the US$12m investment with Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Brand Management- Marketing, Branding, Digital Businesses- at MBC GROUP.
To cement its shift to the Middle East, Wego recently raised $12m from regional broadcaster MBC Group and sealed an equity ownership deal with Middle East Venture Partners. MEVP has said it will draw on its roots and heritage in MENA to reinforce and expand Wego’s regional footprint. Walid Hanna, MEVP Founder and CEO, added, “Online travel in MENA is a large vertical and continues to grow rapidly aided by a shift in consumer behavior from offline to online. Wego is capitalizing on such favorable market dynamics and is already a leading travel brand that is highly recognized by travelers in the region, especially Saudi Arabia.
“We are also pleased to have media giant MBC onboard as a strategic partner with whom we have had three other successful partnerships on other platforms. Wego has an exciting growth plan and with the support of MBC and MEVP, we believe it is well positioned to dominate the travel metasearch play in MENA.”
Asked what equity he still has in the business given the several rounds it has raised over the 12 years, Veitch said “I still own a chunk of the business”. There are five significant external shareholders, Tiger, Crescent Point, Square Peg and now MBC and MEVP.
It’s moved its commercial team to Dubai, scaled down its Singapore office to focus on product, finance and HR and maintains a small presence in Jakarta to handle communications and marketing. Asked why he doesn’t just close down everything else and focus on the Middle East given its promise, Veitch, who now spends 50% of his time in Dubai, said, “Our markets in Asia are beginning to take off as well and we see some synergies between the markets.”
He said there were similarities between the markets in South-east Asia and the Middle East and lessons it had learnt in the former would help it accelerate its growth in the latter.
“Like South-east Asia, it is not one market but a collection of different markets. The key similarity across the Middle East is that nobody seems to do email in any market, everyone is on chat and that’s Whatsapp. You don’t get anything done without that.
“It’s also the polar opposite of Japan in that in Japan, people under-promise and over-deliver while in the Middle East, it takes a while to get into high gear. But the markets are exciting and ever-changing.”
He said the recent ruling to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia for instance was a positive sign of changes happening in the region. “This will be good for the economy and it’s a sign that governments are willing to tackle some of the tough issues.” 
Personally, Veitch said he would be spending more time on product, an area he loves, and last week, Wego launched a hotel map search feature which he said greatly enhances the hotel shopping experience.
His vision is for Wego to evolve into a marketplace, based on the Taobao model, and even though its assisted/facilitated booking rollout has been slower than expected, it was seeing double the conversion rates with this feature.
“While we are working on new tech such as voice and chatbots, the most interesting thing we are looking at is the end-to-end transaction,” he said.