Travel between the Middle East and Asia will continue to grow in 2014 with more flight options between both regions, said an industry expert.

“Intra-regional traffic tops the volume in 2013 due to big expatriate communities working in the Arabian Gulf,” added Mohamad Ibrahim Masri, managing director, Wego Mena, a leading travel metasearch site in the Asia Pacific and Middle East.

He was commenting on Wego’s release on hottest travel hotspots in flight search throughout their core regions and predictions of travel trends throughout for 2014.

“Key tourism destinations such as Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok continue to lead the search results from the Mena region,” Masri said.

“In 2014 as the EU works to further relax visa requirements for Gulf Nationals, more travellers will select Europe for their summer holiday destinations. The UK’s removal of visa requirements for UAE nationals will change the rankings of top destinations for Emiratis, and help to increase the number of holiday and business trips.

“An increased surge in the number of online travel agencies over the past few months may place additional pressure on offline businesses, and in 2014 we will see a further increase in competition for the online travel space,” he added.

“We will see more advanced bookings for summer holidays driven by special offers and promotions that will be rolled out earlier in the market, and we can expect new Asian destinations to be added to the travel menu, with lots of new tourism products from legacy destinations.”

“We’ve seen a lot of shifting trends in all our markets this year,” said Ross Veitch, Wego CEO and co-founder. “People are travelling more frequently and seeking new destinations from traditionally popular routes.”

“Accessibility is leaping forward dramatically in all our regions and the comfort and security of using Wego’s metasearch is clearly reflected in the increasing number of users enjoying our site across all our localised country sites, along with our rapidly growing inventory of airline, hotel and OTA partners, helping them to explore their options to travel anywhere in the world.”

“The Wego team has worked enormously hard this year developing a targeted and very localised user experience with more accessible and advanced technology, tailored to the needs of travellers everywhere which we’re all very excited about. Watch this space,” Veitch concluded.

“The mobile travel market will boom in 2014 and the B2C channel of communication is key to reaching larger audiences through apps, mobile site versions and games,” said Jackson Fernandez, managing director for Wego India.

“Social networking will continue to become integral marketing channels for travel companies as the most effective method in growing brand awareness and engagement with customers,” he continued.

“Wego’s social platform connects with more than 1.5 million fans globally and continues to grow, and will remain a priority in our communication network,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service