Wendy Wu flew in from London to host a media lunch in Sydney, where the founder of Australia’s leading China specialist tour operator unveiled fresh festive and frontier experiences designed with Australian travellers in mind.
Christmas Comes To China
What began as an experimental departure two years ago has rapidly become one of Wendy Wu Tours’ most popular festive itineraries. The Christmas in China tour spends Christmas in glittering Shanghai, where fashionable Christmas markets are emerging as young Chinese embrace Western style celebrations. The journey then continues to Xian to see rare pandas at a conservation park before guests welcome the New Year in Beijing’s hutongs and walk on the Great Wall on New Year’s Day.
Wu personally escorted last year’s Christmas group, suitcase full of British party games in tow. She explained that her team wanted to give guests “the best Christmas party ever, because people trust this very precious time of the year to come with us.”
The itinerary also features Harbin’s spectacular Snow and Ice Festival, where towering illuminated sculptures create what Wu described as “the best holiday and the best party,” and where the festival has been recognised internationally as the world’s largest of its kind.
“For us, specialist touring is not normal touring,” Wu told media. “We go to the extreme to make sure you get local culture and local festivity, while still keeping your own traditions.”
Zhangjiajie: Avatar’s Real Life Backdrop
Wu then turned to one of the most dramatic landscapes in her China portfolio, Zhangjiajie, whose soaring sandstone pillars inspired the floating mountains in the film Avatar.
Wendy Wu Tours was the first company to take a Western group there in the late 1990s, when reaching the region required a six hour coach journey through the mountains. Today, the same area can be reached in around half an hour by bullet train, with frequent services opening it up to a new generation of Australian travellers.
The New Horizons of China itinerary includes Zhangjiajie alongside Beijing, Xian, the Terracotta Warriors and a Yangtze River cruise, and is sold on a fully inclusive basis with international airfares from Australia, touring, most meals and guiding all bundled into the price.
Wu highlighted signature experiences such as the Bailong Elevator, the world’s tallest outdoor lift, and an exhilarating walk along a glass footpath clinging to the cliff face some 350 metres above the valley, followed by a crossing of the world’s highest glass bridge. She recalled escorting 100 top Australian agents there and gently encouraging even the most nervous of them out over the glass. “By the time you walk that glass footpath, you will feel okay,” she said with a smile.
Wu is proud that her company has stayed ahead of China’s rapid change. “Some of our Australian customers go to China with us every year, stay at the same hotel, yet they say the view outside their window is different each time,” she said. “There are always new buildings, always another new road, so our job is to find the most authentic and new places for them.”
Specialist Touring For The Australian Market
The founder’s personal involvement and the brand’s longstanding focus on inclusions remain central to its proposition for local travellers. New Horizons of China and the wider China programme are sold as fully inclusive escorted tours, bundling return airfares, accommodation, most meals, touring, transport and entrance fees so that guests can simply immerse themselves in the culture and the history.
Group sizes are capped to ensure comfort, with large coaches used even for smaller groups so that, in Wu’s words, “everybody has a seat and a half.”
Wendy Wu Tours is widely recognised as a market leader for China and Asia, with its Australian arm positioned as the country’s number one China travel specialist and supported by more than 25 years of experience. As Wu told the Sydney audience, her mission has not changed since she first began leading tours herself.
“You may only go there once with us,” she said. “So we want you to see as much as you can and to really feel the country.”
For Australian travellers keen to swap a hot summer for snow, ice and a very different kind of Christmas, or to stand on a glass bridge among the real life Avatar mountains, now might be the moment to see China the Wendy Wu way.
