CLIENTS VOTE ECRUISING.TRAVEL “THE BEST”

PHOTO Shows ecruising.travel Chairman, Brett Dudley and his wife Philippa, the company’s Finance and Administration Manager.

The sceptics had a field day when ecruising.travel launched just under ten years ago with the-then untested idea of an online booking service selling nothing other than cruise and cruise-related holidays direct to consumers.

Today it is Founder and Chairman, Brett Dudley and his team who are having a field day: they’ve just seen through their biggest year ever, and despite the current economic outlook cruise bookings are pouring in – and they’ve just expanded the concept of ecruising.travel off-shore, opening an office in Hong Kong.

Brett Dudley launched ecruising.travel in January 2000 with a staff of just two. In their first year they sold 212 cruise holidays online: today there are 21-staff in ecruising’s Sydney office, selling over 2000 cruise and cruise-related holiday packages a year.

There are four staff in the recently-opened Hong Kong office, to which Brett Dudley has moved to guide the venture there through its initial months.

“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, and without face-to-face pressures to do or buy things they don’t want,” Dudley says.

“And 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

“And we’ve a very competent and enthusiastic team whom consumers can get onto by phone if they feel there’s some aspect of their holiday they want to talk through with an expert.”

It’s a combination of the easily accessible and simple to understand website, and access to an expert by phone, that has just won ecruising.travel the accolade of Best Individual Cruise Travel Agent for 2008, as voted by readers of Cruise Passenger Magazine.

“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,” Mr Dudley said. “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.”

ecruising.travel sells cruise-only, fly/cruise and fly/cruise/stay holiday to all the world’s major cruise destinations, and has packages to suit all budgets.

“We can put you on an extremely affordable South Pacific cruise, on the world’s biggest cruise liner Queen Mary 2 from Australia to Asia, on a riverboat in Europe, or on the world’s finest boutique cruisers SeaDream I and SeaDream II in the Mediterranean or Caribbean.

“Log onto our website or give us a call and we’ll steer you to just what you are after… ecruising.travel or toll-free 1300 369 848.”