Bezurk.com changes name to wego.com
Published: 09 May 2008
Travel search engine Bezurk.com has opted for re-branding and will be known as Wego.com. The company acknowledged that Bezurk was hard to remember and spell, though it was quirky, fun and had a certain irreverence to it.
"We all loved the Bezurk name," said Martin Symes, Chief Executive Officer of the travel search engine. "But it was also hard to remember and spell, particularly if English was not your native language. Now that we are ready to embark on a more aggressive brand campaign and expand operations around the region, we wanted a new brand and domain name that was easy to recall, type and readily associated with travel."
"When people are deciding to go on a trip, the first questions they usually ask are: 'Where shall we go?' and 'How do we go there?' That's where we come in. Our vision is that Wego.com becomes the first site travelers visit when planning a trip," he added.
The new Wego.com site includes significantly enhanced functionality compared to its predecessor, as well as a large number of completely new features.
New features of the Wego.com site include Travel Research (a specially developed search engine that searches only hand-picked, high quality, travel editorial websites and allows users to filter results by source), Airfares and Hotels are shown inclusive of all taxes, fuel surcharges, airport fees, etc; Business/First class fare searching - helps find discounted tickets for seats at the front of the plane; Flight schedules showing every direct scheduled flight for every route on Earth and the 50 best connecting flights; very useful for time sensitive business travelers.
Other features are airfare searching/browsing and flight searches now include all airlines; where prices aren't available for a particular airline all possible flights are shown along with links for users to check availability and pricing directly with the airline website.
"Rather than do just a simple re-branding, we resolved to launch the new brand with a radically improved website," said Ross Veitch, Bezurk's Chief Product Officer. "We did a lot of work under the hood to make searching faster and more efficient but we also spent a lot of effort making the site easier to use. We undertook usability tests and focus groups to find which user needs were going unsatisfied. Most of the new features we're launching today are based on suggestions and feedback from our users."
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Pitkin said on 14 May 08:
Yes, "Bezurk" was a difficult name. I recall reading a news article, intended to be humorous, about how the Bezurk name came about. It wasn't funny and it made no sense.
"WeGo" is marginally better and I wish the company well. But, there will still be problems with non-English speakers.