He’s the Global Leisure CEO of Flight Centre Travel Group. And his CV smacks of success and is littered with awards. But you won’t hear him talk about that much because James Kavanagh is a big fan of sharing a win. He believes that his success stems from being surrounded by a strong team and focusing on simple, efficient solutions that enhance the customer experience. And he’s living proof that being a leader and being a good person are not mutually exclusive.
The first time I met JK (his preferred moniker), he was amongst a group of other super-important people. I was new to the scene, and he came forward and introduced himself. There was no assumption that I should know who he was. And though I did, I afterwards double-checked that he wasn’t the PR rep.
Because James Kavanagh is nice.
But JK is not to be dismissed as just that nice Irish bloke. You don’t get to where he is by just being nice. JK is incredibly switched on and so passionate about why we do what we do.
More than just selling tickets
“Selling travel is not about the transportation of a person from A to B,” he tells Karryon. “It’s about moving somebody for an enormous amount of reasons.”
“When I started in travel 26 years ago, somebody once said to me you’re not doing the job of a brain surgeon. It’s not life and death. But in the same breath, they also said to me, the customer who you are moving could be a brain surgeon, somebody actually saving a life.”
During the lockdown, we heard the phrase ‘non-essential travel’ so often I was worried about the lasting implications. But if anything, the pandemic proved just how essential travel is.
“Flight Centre agents know the reasons why people are going, and they try to create an experience that is not just about selling a ticket. It’s creating an experience for a variety of reasons.
“Everybody on the frontline who turns up day in and day out knows why they sometimes work 16-hour days. And it’s not just to sell tickets. It’s far greater than that.”
Leading through a global pandemic
JK tells Karryon that he’s the type of leader who “just loves energy, excitement and moving forward”.
While that’s great for our normally dynamic industry, lockdowns and stand-downs were not great.
Karryon chatted to JK about Flight Centre’s documentary about those times, Grounded.
“[Flight Centre founder and CEO] Skroo Turner doesn’t shy away from the bad news,” he says.
“It’s not always roses, and we’ve been on the brink a few times in our history. Grounded wasn’t the entire story.
“There’s a whole other chapter about what really went on on the front line. And that in itself is probably a mini-series.”
“And that’s probably why you see the emotion in me. Because what went on during that period was changing the lives of thousands of people. And that’s always going to be the toughest part”.
But COVID has shown that people hire a travel agent because they value them and they know that they need them as part of their life, JK says.
“Maybe it took COVID for customers to realise how hard people on the front line will work for them, what drives them. And I think it’s great that we’re seeing so many first-timers coming in the door saying I’ve never used a travel agent before.”
The leaders we need now
“While I just love that we are doing what we love doing most, and we’re incredibly, unbelievably busy at the moment, we’re still not fully recovered,” he tells Karryon.
“If you look at the Australian market, outbound departures out of Australia are still just over the 70% mark. And to me, that means that the industry still has a way to go to be fully recovered.”
“But what’s exciting is that despite people talking about an economic crunch in different markets, you can see that travel is a bit of an outlier.”
This, of course, means that agents are busy.
“This year, people are going through different emotions at different stages,” JK says.
“I’m getting messages from our people saying thank you for steering us through this. Saying, who would have thought that a couple of years ago we would be refunding this huge amount, whereas now we have got more sales than we can keep up with?
“Now, for us, our jobs as leaders is to balance health and well-being and keep people energised and moving forward. To make sure that your people are still going okay.”
JK has worked with a number of different travel companies. But says, “there’s something about the culture and care at the Flight Centre Travel Group”.
“The people you work with are not just colleagues; they’re friends. And that sense of care is real.”
But those people you work with are also competing with you for sales, and JK likens the competition to that between the Australian Campbell sisters, who swim against each other. Or the Williams sisters of tennis.
“When they’re staring down the barrel at each other, they’re competing, and that might be for sales or targets or the equivalent. They’re there to make sure that they excel and perform. But once that transaction or that event is finished, their care and love and support for each other are beyond what happened in the competition.”
Words to remember
“I feel very, very passionate about the work that our people do. And I think it’s now hopefully really paying dividends for them because they’re in such high demand.
“But there will be another crisis. Anybody can book a trip on a sunny day, but it’s when it’s raining that you need an expert advisor.”
Amen to that.
You can read more from JK here.
