Founder and Chairman of ecruising.travel Brett Dudley says that the sceptics had a field day when he launched ecruising.travel just under ten years ago with the as then untested idea of an online booking service selling nothing other than cruise and cruise-related holidays direct to consumers.
When he launched ecruising.travel in January 2000 Brett had staff of just two with in their first year selling 212 cruise holidays online.
Today ecruising.travel has twenty one staff in its Sydney office, selling over 2,000 cruise and cruise-related holiday packages a year and four staff in the recently-opened Hong Kong office, with Brett having moved to Hong Kong to guide the venture there through its initial months.
He said, “We proved in 2000 that you didn’t need a shopfront to sell travel and that consumers are savvy enough to be able to go online and work towards their holiday dreams from the comfort of their home or office, without any face-to-face pressures to do or buy things they don’t want.”
“We were the first in Australia to sign up to the .travel web address so consumers simply added that to our name to link directly to us – they didn’t have to worry about our name and a convoluted domain and whether there was a .com or a .com.au It was simply ecruising.travel.”
“We also have a very competent and enthusiastic team who consumers can get onto by phone if they feel there’s some aspect of their holiday they want to talk through with an expert.”
ecruising.travel has also just been voted by readers of Cruise Passenger Magazine the Best Individual Cruise Travel Agent for 2008, with Brett saying, “We’ve won other awards, but this is the best recognition because it comes from clients who voted through the magazine without any outside influences,” adding, “Our feedback shows we have a 97% customer satisfaction rating, which is outstanding and reflects that our team understand its the little things that make all the difference to someone’s holiday.”