Wendy Wu Tours is expanding its reservations team and launching a new “bookable” website as it celebrates sales being more than a third up compared with last year.
The Asia and Latin America specialist said forward bookings for 2017 were 33% up on the same period last year, with the most significant growth coming from Japan tours and tailor-made itineraries.
Founder and chief executive Wendy Wu said: “We hit the sales floor on January 4 and boom, sales were amazing.
“China and Vietnam are growing but Japan is our secret weapon; it’s doing amazingly well,” she added, attributing some of the country’s popularity to recent ITV documentary Joanna Lumley’s Japan.
The operator was able to acquire 90 extra last-minute places on Japan cherry blossom tours for March and April, due to a softness in demand from Thai tourists mourning the death of their king, which made Wendy Wu Tours “the only operator in the UK to still have cherry blossom space”, Wu claimed.
Sales of tailor-made tours have almost doubled in January 2017 compared with last year, with recruitment now under way for two additional reservations consultants specialising in this area.
Wendy Wu Tours will also invest in technology this year, with new consumer and trade websites coming in May or June, which will both enable group tours to be booked online for the first time.
But UK managing director Laurence Hicks said online booking would not replace the need for agent partners and phone-based consultants.
“For our type of product and demographic there is still a lot of interface required,” he insisted.
