WEST West. & Orient.

RNS Number:6215Q
Western & Oriental plc
25 March 2008



Western & Oriental plc


Annual General Meeting 25 March 2008
Chairman's statement

Western & Oriental plc, the specialist luxury travel group announces that at its
Annual General Meeting to be held at 10.00 am this morning at the offices of
Nabarro, Lacon House, Theobald's Road, London WC1X 8RW, David Howell, the
Company's Chairman, will make the following comments with regard to current
trading and prospects:


Trading update

"The group has made a good start to the year with organic growth in line with
our expectations and with gross margins maintained despite some evidence of
pressure on pricing. Ski Dream, particularly in North America, has had a very
strong start to the season. All of our Conference and Incentive (C&I) businesses
have performed well. Our costs are in line with expectations.

The integration of our tour operations brands continues at pace. The group is
seeing tangible benefits from the enhanced scale and synergies that result,
including improved supplier terms that helped maintain margins in a competitive
market. Over the last 18 months we have integrated 12 businesses and brands from
8 different properties from in and around the London area into one office in
Victoria. The group has also made good progress in moving all its UK tour
operations onto a common mid-office system. The project remains on course to be
completed before the end of the financial year, delivering further efficiencies
in the next financial year.



Forward order book

Overall the forward order book has increased very significantly over the same
point last year. Whilst this is partly due to acquisitions, on a like for like
basis there is good organic growth of over 7% compared to the same period last
year. We have seen much stronger like for like growth in our C&I businesses,
although it should be noted that a number of the C&I events will fall into our
next financial year. It is pleasing that both tour operations and C&I both show
positive like for like growth in forward orders in the current market
environment.


Germany

Last year we announced that we would be shutting our office in Frankfurt and
integrating its operation into Kiel where Galka Golden Tours, which we acquired
in September 2007, are located. This rationalisation was completed late in 2007
and the platform to move towards profitability in Germany is now in place.


Acquisitions

On 6 December 2007 we announced the acquisition of Rainbow Tours, a specialist
tour operator to Africa, with a particular focus on Southern and Eastern Africa
as well as the niche destination of Madagascar. It is early days but we have
been very pleased with the performance of Rainbow, which is showing year on year
growth despite the problems currently being experienced in Kenya.


Outlook

We remain cautious but optimistic and this sentiment is supported by the group's
strong forward order book and its resilient and diverse client base. External
commentators continue to talk of the difficult consumer market and suggest a
gloomy future, but to date we have seen only limited evidence of this. In
particular, our C&I business, which generally has a longer sales lead time and
might therefore be considered a better indicator of longer term market
conditions, has shown very strong organic growth and is already securing
significant sales for the next financial year. We also remain encouraged by the
strength of our potential acquisition pipeline and the group's ability to
assess,  acquire, integrate and manage good value businesses that show real fit
with Western & Oriental's strategy to consolidate the luxury and specialist
travel industry."


David Howell
Chairman


Enquiries


Western & Oriental plc
David Howell, Chairman                                0207 821 4078
Steven Hall, Finance Director                         0207 821 4076


Collins Stewart
Adrian Hadden                                         0207 523 8353


Temple Bar Advisory                                   0207 002 1080
Tom Allison                                           0778 999 8020    
Caroline Merrell                                   



About Western & Oriental plc

Western & Oriental is a specialist luxury travel group with a number of
established high quality brands. The company was admitted to trading on AIM
under the ticker symbol WEST in March 2006. The Group acts as a tour operator,
travel agent and conference and incentive organisers, offering a premium service
for tailor-made and specialist packaged holiday programmes to destinations
worldwide.

For more information on Western & Oriental and its individual luxury travel
brand websites, go to www.westernorientalplc.com.



                      This information is provided by RNS
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