Wendy Wu was awarded the distinction of topping the ‘Power List’ award at the 2023 Women In Travel Awards event, presented by Travel Weekly. A year on, the passion is as strong as ever.

Portugal is a current passion for Wendy Wu. And she has had plenty of passions over the 30 years she has been organising tours across the length and breadth of China, exploring Central and South America and Japan. But, at the moment, her current passion is Portugal.

“Prince Henry the (Portuguese) Navigator was in those places long before Columbus,” she says of the Americas and “the Japans”. “It’s considered a tiny country now, but in the 15th, 16th century Portuguese were everywhere,” she says, “They went to the Americas and Asia, including Japan where they traded, not kill, kill, kill.  

“But they did trade guns,” she admits. “But they traded not conquered.” 

Wu’s says her focus has always been on immersive tours, long before the term became popular, and the history and culture of Portugal is her latest obsession.  

“I think it is very important for people to know who they were 400-500 years ago. They were everywhere in the world. Now it is just considered a small country, but it was so different back then.”

For Wu, it’s important that her guests not only get to see but also to experience the people and the cultures of the places Wendy Wu Tours visit.   

“We not only want people to see these places, we want them to live these places,” she says. That is helped by choosing “the cream of the cream” of travel guides and country hosts, which she admits is a particularly selective process. Those guides are now in destinations across the globe where they can share their knowledge.

In addition to the far-flung regions of China, Wendy Wu Tours now cover everything from the Middle East, to Asia, Africa and European Christmas tours, plus rail journeys and combined land and cruise tours – long before the latter was popular. 

Wendy Wu and her team on the Great Wall of China.

Wu’s is a well-known story in the travel trade. Born in Tibet and coming to Australia to study, she had planned a trip to China but when her partner couldn’t make it, she successfully advertised for a travelling companion. After that initial trip in 1994, she has since grabbed that and many other opportunities and created the Wendy Wu Tours business in 1998 that now spans the globe. 

She is fond of a metaphor, likely learned from her father who, she said, told her that life was like a rowing a boat against the current. 

“If you stop rowing, you will go backwards,” she says. So going forward against the flow is in her nature, whether that is new places, new ideas, new ways to work in new countries. 

Where once she would have rowed a reconnaissance mission on her own, picking places, organising tour guides and choosing hotels, these days she has a significant team behind her, with staff in China, Australia, New Zealand, and her home base in the UK.  

She doesn’t have to advertise for travelling companions anymore. These days, Wu takes along her two 16-year-old twins for the cultural ride, and some tech advice, when she does a “reccie” of the next destination in a wider array of global itineraries. It is also good for their education through exploration. 

“I am very good at long term view, five years, 10 years ahead,” she says stretching an arm out in front of her. “I am also good at the very small details,” she says as she holds her hands to her face as if reading a book. 

“But today, my team does everything in between, everything,” she says.  

In 2020, when the world stopped, that team dwindled from an existing 75 in China, 75 in Australia, another 75 in the UK, and 14 staff in New Zealand. But again, she rowed against the current.  

During Covid, what remained of the team revamped the website, continued to publish travel brochures and built an online community. “Cherry blossom season still happened and autumn in China still happened, so we can still see what is there,” she says. 

Plus Wendy Wu Tours continued to take bookings, despite then having to cancel them again and again. One staff member asked her why. 

“I said it’s like climbing a mountain in the fog. You just put one foot above the other and keep climbing but you can’t see what’s ahead. Everyone else might stop, but then one day the fog will lift and you are – zoom – straight to the top.” 

Today, in a rapidly moving world, she is trying to keep up with IT and technological changes like everyone else, including the next generation of travellers who eschew newspaper inserts, magazines brochures and TV commercials and book their travels via Instagram or on advice from friends on Snapchat.  

“I have an amazing tech and IT team, and we are working towards that now with a new project,” she says, without revealing too much. 

While she is a hardworking, successful businesswomen, she is also extremely likeable, animated and passionate about what she does, and the people she shares those experiences with. The word “passionate’ is constantly mentioned in our conversation. 

There are many new places she is passionate about wanting to go, too, including a journey to the centre of the earth, well almost. 

“In China, there is a cave 300 metres deep, full of ice,” she says, plunging a hand to the floor, before sweeping an arm across the room, “three kilometres away there is another cave, where fire comes from out of the ground. I want to show people that!”  

No doubt she will.