The Wendy Wu Story

The life of Wendy Wu is an intriguing story. Born in Tibet, she now owns and heads a global travel company that takes travellers from three continents to her native China and across Asia. Because of her intimate knowledge of the region, she is able to take clients deeper into Asia than others, and she has rapidly moved to the top of her field.Wendy first started operating tours from Australia 20 years ago and within a few years she became the largest specialist operator to China. In 2004 she set up business in London and quickly became the leading tour operator to Asia from the UK. In 2010 Wendy Wu Tours expanded to the US by opening an office in New York. Improbable as was her rise to the head of a global travel company, looking back her humble beginnings were actually the key to her success. Living and travelling in so many parts of China as a child, it seems only natural that Wendy should have a career in the travel industry.Wendy travelled almost from birth and experienced many contrasting environments in China while growing up. Wendy’s father was the principal administrator of the Peoples’ Hospital in Lhasa but at the time Tibet was still very undeveloped and not the best place to raise an infant. So Wendy was sent to stay with her grandparents in Sichuan province, the home of the famous cuisine and the pandas.She lived in Tibet, Sichuan, Shanghai and Jiangsu Province before attending university in Harbin, Manchuria. She also took many holidays with her parents. “When I was a child, travel was frequent to say the least,” says Wendy. “My parents were always travelling and I went with them. Ever since I was born I was travelling all the time. One of my most memorable trips was to cruise down the Yangtze River from Chongqing through the Three Gorges to Shanghai long before it was on the tourist map. It was mostly cargo ships in those days.”

But it wasn’t until she had lived in Australia for a few years and visited much of the country that she really got the travel bug. “Having seen so much of Australia I decided that I really wanted to go back and explore again the country of my birth,” Wendy confides. “And after a lot of research I put together an itinerary that included all of the essential sights as well as some of the hidden gems. Through my knowledge of China I could visit many fascinating places that were unknown to the western world.” Wendy wanted to share her journey with a travelling companion, so she advertised in the local newspaper. She was inundated with calls. It showed her that there was a huge demand for travel to China and the idea of starting a travel company came to life. Wendy approached a travel agency in Sydney and a partnership was born in which she developed and promoted her own tours through the agency. This was 1993. Who could have foreseen then what this small start would become?

In 1998 Wendy left the travel agency and started her own company, Wendy Wu Tours. In four short years, the airlines told her that she was carrying more passengers to China from Australia than any other tour operator. Based on this success Wendy wanted to grow the company further leading to the introduction of tours to other destinations in Asia based on the same winning formula. And with the Australian market conquered, it was only a matter of time before Wendy would move on to the challenges of the UK market and later the US.But Wendy never stops working on the next idea to bring the delights of Asian travel to ever more people.”So far in the UK I have concentrated mainly on group tours while I have been establishing the business,” says Wendy. “It has been important to me to ensure that we have got this absolutely right before moving on to other things.””Our Australian office has been offering tailormade tours to Asia for over ten years and it is a core part of the company. The time is now right for me to share this expertise in the UK.””Tailor-made private touring is fundamentally different from group tours – we are really focusing on the needs of individual travellers and to show that the itineraries we create can be truly unique and flexible.” And so Wendy Wu Tailormade was born and, two years on, is creating more unique and flexible itineraries than ever!