The TravMedia Summit, held alongside the International Media Marketplace (IMM) at the QEII Centre in London on March 9-10, brings together PR professionals, editors, and travel writers for a day of keynote sessions and panel discussions led by senior figures from across the travel industry.
Wendy Wu, founder of Wendy Wu Tours, has revealed the accidental origins of one of the UK’s leading specialist tour operators, telling delegates at the TravMedia Summit how a failed relationship and an unrefundable holiday deposit set her on the path to building a 40-country travel business.
Wu said she originally planned a four-week trip to China with her then-boyfriend, but two weeks before departure he was promoted and could not travel. Unable to recover the cost, she placed a newspaper advertisement offering the itinerary at price, with herself as a free guide. “That’s how the company started,” she said.
The business went on to become the largest specialist tour operator for China in the UK. Wu recalled that on the day she opened at the Destinations travel show, she was interviewed on television by Richard and Judy — without knowing who they were. “My friends saw me on TV,” she said.
Asked about the Covid-19 crisis, Wu said it was “a very strange moment, a situation I never thought I would experience in my lifetime.” She had given a BBC interview in January 2020 expressing confidence the situation would resolve, a position she later described as badly misjudged.
Rather than suspend operations entirely, Wu kept contact with customers and staff and continued producing brochures. When clients began asking to travel to any open destination, she launched tours to Scotland, then New Zealand, before moving into Portugal — building itineraries around the country’s role as the world’s first oceanic empire and its historical links to China, India, Japan and the wider East.
“If Columbus discovered America, who discovered China, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand? It is the Portuguese,” she told delegates. “We dug deep into their contribution linking east and west and the customers loved it.”
On media relations, Wu urged PR professionals to lead with authenticity. “Be yourself and share your strengths,” she said. “You need to tell the whole world and show the journalists what you do and what is good about it.”
The summit serves as a conference for PR professionals, editors, and writers to gain insights from the industry’s most influential leaders and discuss the trends and challenges affecting the sector. TravMedia Emergingtravel.news is covering key sessions from the event.