A SOARAWAY launch of Colombiaexperience.com by a York travel firm, will lead to proprietor Paul Smith having a Colombian experience of his own.

With 200 inquiries on its first day, mostly from York, Leeds and Harrogate, Mr Smith has received a phone call from Pro Expo, the London-based tourism arm of the Colombian government.

Pro Expo is insisting on taking Mr Smith on a free ten-day tour of Colombia to meet government and tourism officials, including tourism operators and hoteliers.

"I've never known anything like the response to this venture. The Colombians are flying me out on Avianca, their national airline, to Bogatar on February 18. I'm ecstatic" said Mr Smith who launched ColombiaExperience.com as a new arm of his successful £2 million turnover Quartz travel business in Heworth Road.

"I had no sooner advertised the new web-based business than within 24 hours I received 200 inquiries. So far that has translated into ten bookings, with 14 in the pipeline - and now this. I can hardly believe it."

Mr Smith, a former British Airways flight attendant who speaks fluent Spanish, said that he specialised in finding niche markets and Colombia was one of them. His bespoke arrangements for flight, accommodation and transfers start at about £1,400 per person.

The country may have had a reputation for being one of the most violent in the world, with ruling drugs barons and SARC revolutionaries, but much has changed under the tough right-wing presidency of Alvaro Uribe Velkez.

Dominated by the desire to rid the country of the SARC rebels who killed his father 21 years ago, he has forced the revolutionary fighters out of the towns and cities and into the countryside.

He has also taken on the drug traffickers head on, inflicting on them major defeats. The US has welcomed Colombia back into the free trade area and, for the first time, the South American country is emerging as "the tourist place to go for those-in-the-know".

That has been achieved partly through Pro Expo encouraging travel agencies to add Colombia to their broad portfolios, but the organisation was taken by surprise when it learned of Mr Smith's travel website dedicated solely to trips to Colombia.

Juliana Gomez, head of Pro Expo in London, said: "Paul is ahead of the game."