What is WeGold?
Founded in 2015 with a mission to connect the rise of Asian FITs – Free & Independent Travellers – to the long tail of the world’s most aspirational travel experiences, such as island getaways, adventure pursuits, eco-tourism, and authentic local activities.
In 2016, we introduced a WeChat based Social Travel App that enabled Chinese tourists to discover and book aspirational travel experiences across its first launch region of South East Asia.
As part of our initial efforts to grow our user base and determine market acceptance, we launched our first aspirational “Island Fever” campaign in 2017 with over 400 curated activities across 10 key destinations in South East Asia featuring videos, story-telling and key online influencers social media sharing.
This was followed up in 2017 with the launch of an IOS-based App, integrated with WeChat Pay, Alipay as well as popular international credit cards via Stripe.
The WEGOGO App validated the demand for such travel experiences, many of these truly localized and authentic experiences by small local travel service providers were not featured on larger and more established OTAs (Online Travel Agents) such as Ctrip, Tuniu and AliTrip.
Since December 2017, we have achieved 5,000 transactions, giving us the confidence that it addresses the needs of both the target Chinese travellers and the long tail service providers – both sides of the Aspirational Travel value chain.
In 2018, the “Island Fever” campaign will be expanded to cover 25 island-based destinations and over 3,000 exciting and authentic experiences. By 2020, our goal is to attain over 125 island destinations, and 16,000 activities for bookings.
We will continue to first serve outbound Chinese travellers – the largest Asian travel market – to grow its traction and scale, focusing on local & authentic South East Asia destinations as its core, and then leveraging that local knowledge and presence to serve South East Asian travellers – the world’s fastest online travel growth market.