Wotif chief executive Scott Blume has defended the company’s stuttering performance as it finalises plans to revitalise its struggling Asian business.

Growth in Wotif’s core Australian accommodation division has slowed markedly in recent times which has disappointed shareholders and analysts who have grown familiar to a story of rising profits.

But Blume argued that Wotif was not alone in seeing a slowdown. And it was also inevitable after so many years of “spectacular” growth that business would start to level out, he said.

After tax profits fell 12% to $51 million in the 2013 fiscal year, hampered by stagnating Australia and New Zealand room nights and a $3.3m revenue decline in Asia.

Wotif is expected to provide profit guidance for 2014 when it delivers its first half results next month.

“When you have been growing so much like that,” Blume said, using his hand to indicate a sharp growth curve, “at some point it’s going to tail off. Wotif has been the darling of the market. But at some point it’s going to slow down and, generally, the growth for online travel agents has definitely slowed.”

The overall retail environment has also suffered amid stumbling consumer confidence with only one or two listed companies bucking a bleak trend, he continued.

Blume pointed to Wotif’s Asia performance – room nights were down a worrying 22% in 2013 – as the main area of concern, a concern he said it is now in the midst of addressing.

“Retail is still really problematic. A couple of retailers have done well – Flight Centre and Super Cheap Auto – but very few others. It’s hurting and that is a fact,” Blume told Travel Today. “But that’s not an excuse.  Asia is not affected by Australian retail sentiment and there is no question our Asia business has under-performed. It has gone backwards three years in a row.

“We have been criticised for a lack of growth but if you take out the Asia revenue shortfall Wotif would have performed quite solidly.”

Blume said he was “stunned” by earlybird airfares of $1250 to Paris which are indicative of the challenges in the market.

“Airlines would not be selling those fares if they didn’t have to,” he said. “And I don’t see any compelling reason why that will change. But hopefully it will drive consumer demand.”

The turnaround of the Asia business has been one Blume’s key strategic aims since taking over from Robbie Cooke in January. Plans to fix the two areas of concern – intra-Asia and Australia outbound – are about to kick in.

“We underspent on our marketing intra-Asia,” Blume admitted. “Plans are finished and we’ll be starting to spend money this month and will be ramping it up. You won’t see the effect in the first half but I hope to start seeing the impact in the second half of the fiscal year.  I am reasonably confident we can get the volumes back.”

Turning to the Australia outbound market into Asia, Blume said he was only after his “fair share”, with the launch of packages among the strategies to achieve that aim.

“I’m not looking to rule the world. I just need Australians to know that if they are travelling to Asia then I have great rates.”

Both strategies must be “cohesive” in order to leverage its relationship with suppliers, he added, with Blume insisting it was not about having an endless list of hotels.

“We had a KPI (key performance indicator) to grow the number of hotels into Bali. Stop,” he said. “I want to drive more traffic into a smaller number of hotels. I want to be more relevant to my suppliers.”

Blume acknowledged that one of the greatest legacies left by Cooke was Wotif’s brand awareness, with 50% of traffic coming direct to its sites, for free. The other 50% – paid search – is where Wotif will crank up its spend, he said.

“Our search, where we spend money, is as good as anyone’s globally. We know search, and we’ll start to spent more money on paid search,” he said. “But we also did a pretty bad job for our Asian properties on our optimised business and work is underway on that.”

Meanwhile, Blume said the company was exploring ways of taking Lastminute.com.au “back to its roots” and getting exactly that – more last minute bookings.

“Mobile will help me get there with that,” he said, although he declined to expand on potential plans.

“We also have a number of ideas for the travel.com.au brand but it’s still work in progress. It has a loyal following for flights and even without a lot of promotion it drives good traffic.”