Wego Acquisition of Cleartrip Middle East Would Create Online Travel Group
Photo Caption: (From left) Ross Veitch, co-founder and CEO of Wego, and Stuart Crighton, co-founder and head of Cleartrip's international business. Wego plans to acquire Cleartrip's Middle East business.
Skift Take
Booking.com has a substantial presence in the Middle East, but there is a vacuum that Wego Group and homegrown players could begin to fill over the next few years.
Singapore-headquartered Wego has traditionally been a regional metasearch business, where travelers search for trips and book them elsewhere, but the pending acquisition it announced this week of Cleartrip's Middle East business from India e-commerce giant Flipkart Group would create a more diversified online travel group.
"Our ambition is to build one of the world's great online travel companies with MENA (Middle East and North Africa) at the core and with emerging markets more broadly as the theme," Wego co-founder and CEO Ross Veitch said Tuesday. Wego is dual headquartered, with Dubai as the other location.
If the deal passes regulatory muster in the second half of 2022, then Wego would rename itself the Wego Group and would acquire India-based Cleartrip's Middle East operations, including Saudi Arabia-based Flyin.com.
