WEGO, which finalised and signed the contract yesterday with the ASEAN Tourism Association (ASEANTA) to operate Southeastasia.org, the website belonging to the regional private sector tourism body, will start by focusing on driving traffic to and making enhancements on the site.
“Initially, we will do some work to better optimise it for search engine rankings, so if people are looking for South-east Asia travel information, they will come to the site through organic search. We’ll (Wego) spend money – more in paid-search, cost-per-click type, to kick this off,” said Wego CEO Martin Symes. “Like any web business, it all begins with traffic.”
The site is attracting “small but steady” traffic, the biggest being the US market, followed by Europe and Australia, who arrive via Google and other search on “South-east Asia”. Symes said using the “South-east Asia” tourism branding rather than “ASEAN” was more pragmatic. “If we want to be up in the Google search engine rankings, South-east Asia is what people are searching for, not ASEAN,” he said, adding that the website’s tagline, Feel the Warmth, would also be kept.
A new feature Wego is soon adding to the site is a referral to offline travel agents. “At the moment, those looking to fulfil travel on the site are online travel agents, but we are also going to add a referral system to send enquiries to the offline agents,” he said.
SoutheastAsia.org is crucial to the ASEAN tourism leaders’ dream of promoting the region as one destination despite limited resources. The United States Agency for International Development had provided the funding to set up the site and it is now in the hands of ASEANTA to make it self-sustaining.
“These are very early days,” said Symes when asked about targets. “Competing for eyeballs in the Internet space is tough, but we’ll give it a go. We think it is a great product – ASEAN is still the best region in the world to travel to and there is plenty of demand to come here.”
Symes and ASEANTA members were at the inaugural ASEAN eTravel Mart in Bangkok yesterday. ASEAN secretary-general Dr Surin Pitsuwan, in a video address to mart delegates, said a target of 85 million tourists coming in and out of ASEAN had been set for 2015, when the region would be a single community. This represents a 25 per cent increase from 2009.
“For that to happen, we have to make sure products and services can be accessed by markets easier, quicker and more accurately. Now, most of the access is through traditional means – phone calls, faxes, emails,” he said. “There’s a need for one integrated website…”
