Re-branded travel search engine introduces improved site and new features as part of its regional expansion

SINGAPORE, 8 May 2008 — Asia Pacific’s leading travel search engine Bezurk.com announced today it is re-branding and launching its next-generation travel search engine: Wego.com. The new site, which goes live today, features a raft of new powerful yet intuitive tools designed to make searching multiple travel sites for the best travel deals faster and easier than ever before.

“We all loved the Bezurk name. It was quirky, fun and had a certain irreverence to it,” said Martin Symes, Bezurk’s Chief Executive Officer. “But it was also hard to remember and spell, particularly if English was not your native language. Now that we are ready to embark on a more aggressive brand campaign and expand operations around the region, we wanted a new brand and domain name that was easy to recall, type and readily associated with travel.

“When people are deciding to go on a trip, the first questions they usually ask are: ‘Where shall we go?’ and ‘How do we go there?’ That’s where we come in. Our vision is that Wego.com becomes the first site travelers visit when planning a trip.”

The new Wego.com site includes significantly enhanced functionality compared to its predecessor, as well as a large number of completely new features.

New features of the Wego.com site

“Rather than do just a simple re-branding, we resolved to launch the new brand with a radically improved website,” said Ross Veitch, Bezurk’s Chief Product Officer. “We did a lot of work under the hood to make searching faster and more efficient but we also spent a lot of effort making the site easier to use. We undertook usability tests and focus groups to find which user needs were going unsatisfied. Most of the new features we’re launching today are based on suggestions and feedback from our users.”

• Travel Research– a specially developed search engine that searches only hand-picked, high quality, travel editorial websites and allows users to filter results by source, such as travel magazines, newspaper features, travel guide books, user reviews, blogs & forums, travel photos, travel videos or travel industry news
• Airfares and Hotels are shown inclusive of all taxes, fuel surcharges, airport fees, etc wherever possible allowing users to see the real price at the beginning, rather than at the end, of the booking process
• Business/First class fare searching – helps find discounted tickets for seats at the front of the plane
• Flight schedules showing every direct scheduled flight for every route on Earth and the 50 best connecting flights; very useful for time sensitive business travelers
• Airfare searching/browsing – very quickly shows all the airfares without having to specify dates or having to check availability
• Flight searches now include all airlines; where prices aren’t available for a particular airline all possible flights are shown along with links for users to check availability and pricing directly with the airline website.

Enhancements to wego.com couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

The Asia Pacific travel and tourism industry is expected to grow rapidly, with tourism revenues to top US$4.6 trillion and visitor arrivals to reach 500 million by the end of 2010, according to the latest forecast of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). The forecast, released in March, also indicates that China is set to generate unprecedented growth in outbound travel to the region’s destinations.

Moreover, global market analyst Euromonitor International last year reported that India will be Asia’s fastest growing market for online travel retail by 2010. They predict a 271.6% growth in internet travel sales between 2005 and 2010— generating in excess of US$2 billion in online retail sales in 2010 alone.

To better serve this explosion in travel, Symes said that Wego.com plans to roll out localized country sites in the coming months, ensuring greater relevance and more options for Asian travelers – including multiple local languages.

About Wego.com

Wego.com (formerly Bezurk.com) allows travelers to search for flights, hotels, travel deals and travel research across 100+ travel websites in the time that it normally takes to search just one. Wego searches travel websites in real-time so that the latest pricing and availability are shown. Travelers are then linked through to partner websites to book. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives from Intercontinental Hotels Group, Yahoo!, Priceline and ZUJI. News Digital Media, the Australian digital arm of News Limited and part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), is an investor. In 2007, Business 2.0 magazine named Bezurk as one of “31 of the world’s hottest international web startups”. For more information, please visit www.wego.com/about.

Resources for editors

For Wego.com logos and screen grabs: www.wego.com/mediakit

For media queries about this story, please contact:

DEBBIE R. COLOMA
DRC Media Consultancy
PR & Media Consultant for wego.com
Mobile (65) 9682 0551
Email: press@wego.com

Source – http://www.wego.com/blog/2008/05/08/travel-search-engine-bezurk-changes-name-to-wego

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