Wingie Enuygun Group (WEG), the fastest-growing online travel marketplace in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia has extended its partnership with Travelport to expand in the region and beyond. This follows on from a successful technology collaboration that unlocked huge new potential and more earning opportunities for WEG. Its next move? Expansion into new markets, enabled by modern retailing strategy.
First stop: MENA. Next stop: the world.
In just three years, the online travel marketplace has
rapidly scaled, now processing over six million flight bookings annually.
Wingie Enuygun has
continuously innovated, with standout projects like its virtual interlining
system, LogiConnect and the launch of WingieBot, the first artificial
intelligence flight search assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Currently, WEG is the fastest-growing online travel
marketplace in the region, with a strong presence in both the MENA (Middle East
and North Africa) and Central Asia regions. After three years of consistent and
substantial growth, driven by its partnership with Travelport, WEG now draws
over 22 million monthly website visits and has been downloaded by more than 12
million users. With an ambitious goal of ranking among the world’s top five
travel marketplaces by 2028, WEG is well on its way.
Building on the success of its existing partnership, WEG
recently engaged Travelport as a strategic partner to gain access to new
consumer bases in the Middle East — in particular Saudi Arabia and the UAE —
plus Africa and North and South America.
"At Wingie Enuygun, we are pioneering innovative, AI-driven solutions that
have never been seen in the industry, and the results have been overwhelmingly
positive,” said Çağlar Erol, CEO at Wingie Enuygun Group.
“Our advanced technology allows us to establish operations in new countries
within just 48 hours. As we expand, Travelport supports our growth in global
markets. With a significant physical presence in the Middle East, Travelport is
helping us execute our fast and scalable growth strategy. With the help of
Travelport, we aim to double our booking volumes each year.”
A multi-source content strategy for global expansion
The competition among online travel agencies is fierce.
Therefore, WEG - operating under multiple consumer brands - needs access to a
wide range of content from multiple sources. As part of the new extended
agreement, WEG will continue to use the Travelport+ platform to get the choice
it needs to drive global expansion, including flights and ancillaries from more
than 478 airlines, including 18 NDC airlines currently live with more to come
in 2024.
More content choice typically means more technical
complexity, but WEG saves time and energy on development through Travelport’s
retail-ready content offering. Because the data is aggregated, normalized and
enriched in advance by Travelport+, multiple sources can be shown, side by
side, including NDC. This means WEG can get richer, more flexible travel
content (including branded fares), which aligns with evolving consumer
preferences and is better for the booker.
AI-powered search results
But with a wide range of content comes an additional need: the ability to quickly and accurately return relevant results. This is critical to conversion and revenue growth, so WEG sought Travelport’s help to win the search speed race. How? Via Travelport’s new Content Curation Layer.
These AI-powered search controls make searches faster and more accurate, by de-duplicating content that appears on screen, something that’s typically a challenge when dealing with NDC content. And working with Travelport, Wingie has achieved a lightning-fast search time of under 1.5 seconds.
Lightweight, microservices API
The online travel marketplace uses Travelport’s lightweight,
microservices API to improve the accuracy of results, by running pre-search
filtering and optimization scripts in the background to make sure the content
delivered is the right fit for the searcher. And it now can combine return and
one-way options into a single response, reducing the number of transactions and
processing costs.
This is something that sets Travelport apart — many
technology providers and aggregators typically cannot match the level of
content depth and filtration capabilities that enable WEG to operate much more
efficiently. All this helps keep customers moving quickly throughout the
search/booking funnel, maintaining their focus and driving conversions.
“Travelport+ provides the retail-ready content and
capabilities we need to create a modern consumer experience on our travel
marketplace,” Erol said.
“It’s agile, fast, and lets us offer everything from
self-service tools to faster search responses powered by AI.”
Great retailing = global growth
Today, Wingie Enuygun has more than165 million annual
visitors, and as it enters new markets, it intends to keep growing that number.
Knowing that customers have plenty of sites to choose from, WEG is
strategically prioritizing building loyalty through retailing excellence. It
focuses on two key areas in that regard: user experience and customer service.
That starts with continuously improving the website and booking experience and
continues through to its online post-booking services.
All of this naturally hinges hugely on technology, which is
where this extended partnership comes in. Working with Travelport, Wingie
Enuygun has been able to significantly reduce the pressure on its customer
services, using automation tools on Travelport+.
Travelport will continue to provide technical assistance, system stability, and
operational efficiency, letting the business cater to the needs of its user
base, growing conversions and providing easier servicing for customers.
Going forward, the business will also focus on adding more
value to its flight upsells, creating an even greater customer experience and
expanding beyond flights into hotel retailing — something that is already
underway.