A year after expanding its presence in Australia, cultural travel specialist Martin Randall Travel (MRT) is celebrating a year of strong growth in the market and a warm reception from the local travel industry.
The tour operator launched in Australia last year with preferred partnerships with CT Partners, Envoyage, Link Travel Group, and Luxury Travel Collection (LTC).
MRT offers an expansive range of specialised culture tours, covering archaeology, architecture, art, gastronomy, history, houses and gardens, literature and drama, music, ballet and opera, and walking.
In Australia and New Zealand, Martin Randall Travel is represented by Ascend Travel Group, who believes the brand is uniquely placed to meet the region’s growing appetite for cultural travel.
“The response from Australian travellers who discover Martin Randall Travel is almost always the same – why didn’t I know about this sooner? Our role is simply to make sure more of the right people find it,” Ascend Travel Group co-founder and director, Lynda Wallace said.
“We’ve been welcomed into the Australian travel industry with real warmth, and the feedback we’re hearing is wonderfully consistent – travellers tell us they’re experiencing things they simply can’t find anywhere else.”
The MRT appeal
The elements that Ascend Travel Group says appear consistently in client feedback are:
Privileged access: behind-the-scenes visits, private openings and access to places and collections not available to the general public. On MRT’s ‘Essential Rome / Raphael, in Celebration’ itinerary, clients can enjoy a private, after-hours visit to the Vatican to view the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s frescoes in solitude. On the ‘Cathedrals of England’ journey, travellers are led through sections of the Wells Chained Library usually closed to the public, as well as through the Octagon Lantern Tower at Ely Cathedral.
Expert speakers: every tour is led by a working expert: a historian, archaeologist, art historian or musicologist who has devoted their career to the places and subjects they visit with the group.
Popular tours for Australian travellers
- Music along the Danube brings performers of the calibre of Paul Lewis, Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra to eight private concerts in palaces, abbeys and historic theatres, accompanied by musicologist Dr Katy Hamilton.
- The Aegean: Shaping the Greek World sails a privately chartered vessel through the ancient civilisations of Crete and the Cyclades, led by two Cardiff University professors with decades of excavation experience.
- Traditions of Japan brings one of the world’s foremost scholars of Japanese art and culture, Professor Timon Screech, on board as a guide for this small group tour from Tokyo from Kanazawa to Kyoto, exploring the craft traditions, artistic history, and cultural complexity of the region.
- Scotland: History and Heritage brings former National Museums Scotland Keeper David Forsyth to trace the country’s great diaspora through castles, Highland landscapes, and great cities. The journey holds particular resonance for the many Australians who carry Scottish ancestry.
With more than 200 itineraries spanning 40 countries – across Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa – Martin Randall Travel offers Australian travel agents an extraordinary breadth of specialist cultural journeys for their most curious and discerning clients.
Travel agents can explore the full program and register on the agent portal at https://www.martinrandall.com/en-au/about/agent.
