The brand, which is part of Travelopia, was originally set up by the Italian state railway in 1929 to offer Italians living in the UK trips back to their homeland.
Citalia managing director Helen Adamson told TTG: “We must be one of the oldest specialist brands that’s still going. We still have a lot of Italians working in the business and we have great destination experts.”
To mark the anniversary, Citalia has launched a special deal for January bookings, offering free first-class internal rail travel for clients and £20 per booking for agents.
Adamson added further promotions would follow throughout the year, including offering both agents and their customers a bottle of prosecco for bookings made in February and March.
Agents will also get the chance to secure a place on an anniversary fam to Italy later in the year.
“We normally do a 24-hour trip to a city, but this year we will be doing a 90-hour multi-centre trip where agents can experience the real Italy,” explained Adamson.
She said they would be keeping the destinations for this trip secret for now, with the competition set to launch in March or April.
Another plan is to hold a series of special anniversary dinners for agents in the UK, with details to be revealed later.
“The trade is incredibly important for us and a major part of our business mix,” said Adamson. “We launched our campaign on December 20 and have seen a massive pick-up in bookings from that day – the signs are very encouraging so far.”
Adamson added that Citalia had not seen any impact on bookings from Brexit so far.
Senior regional purchasing manager Heather Green said Citalia had introduced a range of new escorted tours for 2019 with group sizes of up to 18 people.
“We used to do escorted tours about 15 years ago with a big coach,” she added. “But our customers don’t want to be in such a large coach and too big a group.”
