Wendy Wu Tours has reported £600,000 in sales generated during lockdown between April 1 and June 15.
While bookings for the rest of the year have remained slow, the operator has seen a gradual daily increase for 2021, particularly for Vietnam and Cambodia, central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America as well as an increasing trend in solo travel.
The uplift follows three months of activity which has seen the operator deliver agent and consumer webinars during lockdown.
A series of online agent destination and educational tutorials have complemented live webinars from Vietnam and India with weekly audience figures averaging between 60 and 80 people.
The operator is reporting low cancellation levels with more than 65% of customers due to travel this year rebooking for 2021.
Global sales director John Warr said: “Despite very challenging trading conditions, which we know is being felt by everyone in the travel industry, this shows that there is still a high propensity for travel, particularly in 2021, as we’ve seen over the last three months.
“We know how difficult it has been for agents during this time and so that’s why we’re supporting the trade and helping them and their customers with our online webinars, destination and touring tutorials.
“This has all helped to keep us front of mind in the trade plus we’ve seen that agents engaging in our online programmes are consistently reporting frequent sales, which of course benefits our agents with extremely healthy bonus commissions.
“In addition, we are helping agents to be much more competitive with their customers by offering a range of unique value-added services such as our range of free business class upgrades, early bird savings for 2021 departures as well as free membership to Amazon Prime, Netflix and Audible with every booking.”
He added: “Our agents and homeworkers have given us unprecedented support and engagement over this period, for which we are truly thankful.
“We have taken these measures to help protect agents in the long-term, whilst ensuring we can continue to deliver the same levels of exceptional support during this period.
“We have plans in place to fully utilise our online capabilities with the trade over the next three months, giving us full capacity in which we can continue to fully support our agent friends and their customers.”
