Seamless Xtra’s Mark Dowdall sat down with Mamoun Hmedan, Chief Business Officer of online travel marketplace, Wego, at Dubai’s Step Conference to discuss travel trends, the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later and how e-commerce is making travel in the Middle East more seamless than ever.
Mamoun, this seems like a really competitive industry. Can you tell me a little bit about what you offer and what Wego is doing different to stand out in the online travel segment?
Yes it is competitive today in the online travel, marketplace proposition. But that wasn’t the case when we came into the market in the Middle East almost a decade ago. Then, we were pretty much the only online travel player who offered the full marketplace and search capabilities, in Arabic and in local currencies. It was the first fully localized product at that time.
What is it about your model then that makes different from the other global players?
We are a marketplace where we connect with airlines, hotels, brands, and online travel agencies globally. And we put their offers in front of consumers who are searching for their desired trips. Plus, also a few years ago we added our own product, so consumers can purchase directly from us. Or they can still continue and buy from one of our partners.
Obviously, travel has come through some very challenging years recently but global demand seems to now be back to pre-Covid levels. What are some of the big trends you are seeing this year?
Yes, I think pre COVID, we reached a ratio of nearly 40% of travel purchases which happened happen online. That was around 2019. Covid paused everything, obviously, but post Covid, because of the higher increase of e-commerce usage in general, I think travel has benefitted.
Today the market has shifted completely into online. It’s 60-40 now, online to offline, and subject to increase further this year. Interestingly we are seeing more usage, more trips but shorter trips. We also see more solo trips than before. Previously, this region was very well known as a place for family and big groups. That’s still there but since COVID, we’re seeing more and more solos and couples traveling.
Business travel is back at its peak too. I think lots of user behaviour is now more towards personalised demands. Every user is looking for super tech enabled features that they would expect from a travel application like ourselves or any of the others operating in the market.
There has also been a tremendous change in the payment landscape. A few years ago, Buy Now, Pay Later didn’t exist. But now almost 20 percent of the travel budget is happening on Buy Now, Pay Later. There are now lots of offerings across the market. Lots of local payment schemes have been introduced and lots of loyalty programmes have been put in practice.
So there’s obviously been a lot of changes. When you look at this shift from family travel to more solo, shorter trips how would you use that data in terms of offering other services, other products, and also boosting your revenue?
Well, we have around 65 million users who have downloded our app in this part of the world. We have around 10 million active users monthly so there is lots of data to consume and understand. One of the first things we see is top destinations. We work with lots of tourism offices to help them on a co-marketing basis to educate the consumers about different destinations and to get them to transact and to travel to that destination. So there are lots of data touch points that we create.
Travel is also very seasonal, of course. How does that effect how you plan ahead in this region?
It is true that travel is generally very seasonal. However, that’s also changing. The seasonal travel here gets affected pretty much every couple of years because of the shift of Ramadan season, which is going backward by 10 to 15 days every year. So you’ve got a month every year where things change, school holidays change and the whole pattern changes, basically.
With shorter trips and more solos, we aslo see more frequency. There are lots and lots of low cost carriers offering in the market now compared to before. So, tickets are more, accessible, I would say and we have more products to offer at the moment. What we try to do is create products and experiences, and enable our product and front end to provide users with as close as they would desire in terms of searches for their trips, be it for flights or hotels.
We try to cross sell flights to hotels and provide extra services. One of the things we like to think about is how we get people to the destination so pre-trip, we help them with that. But also, we’re more focusing on what we can offer them during the trip and potentially post trip, especially around reviews and getting to understand how that is going.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
I guess for you, you’re trying to make the whole process as seamless as possible. How are you tapping into some of the new technologies to make that happen?
Yes defintiely, I mean, for us, we have to look at it from different angles. One of them is how we can get our staff using it but the more important part is figuring out ways to build products on top of existing applications. We’re encouraging our tech team to use this AI for coding, which is tremendously time saving and faster in terms of implementation, building stuff, and rolling it out. But I think once we start building the products on top of the foundation that we have already set, I think personalisation in terms of offering should be taken to a second level and that’s what we desire to complete this year.
From my own personal experience of using travel apps, or airlines for that matter when I have a good experience, I tend to go back and use that same travel app or airline again and again. Is loyalty a big thing for you? How do you make sure customers keep coming back to use your travel app or your marketplace and don’t go somwhere else?
For us, as a marketplace, consumers love using products like ourselves because they basically have a full vision on the entire marketplace. So they see all the offerings in the market in one platform. That’s a great proposition in front of consumers.
But what we try to do is basically to utilise data as much as we can and try to narrow down the search in all possible ways. We apply lots of filters within the product so the consumer can really really tailor make the trip the way they want. We give options to choose a specific airline, specific departure time, specific landing time, a multi -destination option and alos lots of preferred payment options. Even before running the search the consumer can choose what sort of payments options they have or want to use. So that all gives a fantastic user experience. As well as this, we invest a lot in the brand too so people think of us as a first option whenever they want to travel.
Is a points system something that you would consider?
As a marketplace, we try to be agnostic towards everyone so we’re not into the points system. But I think within our own product, there are lots of ideas about creating a connection directly with those who buy from our own product. We launched during COVID a product called ShockCash, which is a cashback rewards platform. Consumers love to use it for their routine purchases. So when they purchase from Wego or from our partners they can earn some cash back on that. And we’re trying to foster that and put more efforts into growing that user base and educate the market more about it.
Would you say then thay you have good base to potentially expand into other services beyond travel? To evolve even more into a super app that can do multiple things?
We already think of ourselves as a super app but dedicated to travel at the same time. We don’t want to go into every sector and add products that are not necessarily within the travel scoop.
We’re in the process now to add some more services but all within the travel sector. For instance, we already have an insurance product in place and we want to add more insurance providers in there. We want to add car hire, we want to add airport transfers, we want to add activities. We are very well known for pre-trip, but it is in. our in-trip offering that we think our product is going to evolve most in the future.
Finally, you mentioned payments and the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later. Would you say it the younger demographic that is driving this?
Actually, it’s interesting to see that it’s pretty much across the board but for traffic specifically, we see it more for the families and groups. If you look at a booking whenever a ticket or tickets exceed the 10,000 Dirham or Riyal mark we start seeing more demand on the Buy Now, Pay Later. And that’s quite frequent. People find it amazing because plan their trips ahead, they can split the payment across, three, four, six month and do more trips too basically.
So it is very, very promising. I think we have two big providers in the region that managed to scale, and more to come.
