A YORK rail holiday specialist has surpassed the £10 million profit mark as it looks to grow sales to overseas customers.

Great Rail Journeys, which employs 150 people at its head office in St Saviourgate, has attributed its success over the last year to growing popularity in both long haul and UK based holidays, as well as an increased awareness of rail tours following a television marketing campaign.

The company, which packages and sells holidays to around 40 countries across Europe, Africa, North America, Asia, Russia and Australasia, posted adjusted profits of £10.8 million for the year to October 31, 2015.

The results, filed under parent company Thomas Topco, saw profits rise £1.1 million from the year before off revenues of £86.5 million as passenger numbers hit 58,000 for the year.

The group, which operates through brands Great Rail Journeys, Rail Discoveries and GRJ Independent, described its sales performance as satisfactory, "especially given the impact of migrant/refugee disruption and the threat of terrorism on late summer holiday bookings".

Alex Roberts, group marketing and sales director said: "Three things in particular have driven our growth.

"In the first instance we have done a lot of work with our product, and we are yielding the results.

"Mainly we are seeing growth coming from long haul destinations, India, Vietnam, China and the USA are driving visitor numbers up for us. We are really pleased with that area of the business.

"We've also been promoting our direct routes to the Arctic Circle by rail, which has proved to be hugely popular as an alternative to the northern lights cruises. It's been very popular with our database but is also opening us up to a lot of new customers.

"Closer to home we have seen really good growth in small barge river cruises in the UK as holidaying at home is another key growth area for us.

"We have done a lot of television advertising over the last year, which is new for us. That has really started to build awareness of holidays by rail as a concept.

"We have got lots of new exciting product launches which will be released in summer this year."

Mr Roberts said Great Rail Journeys is also looking replicate a distribution deal it has agreed with APT in Australia, with plans to build on the concept elsewhere in the world.