Karryon has an exclusive chat with the Flight Centre brand boss about who the Flight Centre travel advisor is now, what’s changed for agents post-COVID and what keeps him up at night.
If you’re a past or present Flightie, you’ll know about Brightness of Future aka BOF – Flight Centre’s illumination of potential career paths for its personnel – not only within the brand but the wider Flight Centre Travel Group as well.
Now that Flight Centre has a global outlook, this strategy has also opened up the world for its staff.
Presenting to media in April and suppliers this week, Flight Centre Global Managing Director Andrew Stark shared the brand’s vision and strategy, highlighting the Renaissance of the Travel Agent as consumers seek the personal touch in 410 stores worldwide or through digital or specialist channels.
“We’re a third of our size post-COVID and the composition of our workforce today is 30 per cent novices and 70 per cent retained,” he said.
Flight Centre Australia also overhauled its TTV (total transaction value) model, component and profit incentives for consultants on 1 January 2023, simplifying and streamlining the process.
New recruitment focus
Stark said programs designed to keep in touch with employees let go during COVID have pivoted to attract new recruits. Around 52 per cent of current FC staff have less than five years’ experience with the brand.
“We had a program where we kept in touch with all our people to see if they were keen to come back. We call them ‘boomerangs’ – they go out and they come right back,” he explained.
“But I think that ship has sailed somewhat and a lot of them have other jobs so, we are back in the world of recruiting new sales-minded people into Flight Centre.
“We’ve had to completely change the thinking again so the approach is geared to bringing in people with limited experience.
“We’ve started to ramp up our in-house training departments again so we have full-scale trainers back and our onboarding program has been extended,” he said.
Specialists driving sales and opportunities
While the makeup of travel agents has changed, BOF remains consistent but now Flight Centre is shining the spotlight on alternative career trajectories other than leadership.
The specialist channel in particular is where Stark sees the most growth and opportunity for agents with 50 Specialist teams around the world.
Recruits can spend a year or two in the brand and then transition into areas such as First & Business, Groups, Complex Air, Around the World or Business Travel specialisations.
“Ideally, where we can, we are trying to bring in people with skills, hence why Specialist is such a big play for us,” he said.
“There’s certainly a gap for highly specialised, highly skilled travel experts and that’s what we’re opening up again.
“These Specialist divisions will give agents another angle to their career where I think in the past they would leave or go to another brand within the stable and now they don’t have to.
“It’s making it simple for their progression or their Brightness of Future and we retain skill and we retain customers.”
The future is bright
Stark says that not only does the future look bright for consultants, but Flight Centre has also stepped strongly out of the pandemic’s shadows with a brand turnaround of around $235 million in the past year.
“I think we’ve done a fantastic job in the last 18 months in globalising, standardising and localising the Flight Centre brand for future success – the brand is in an exceptionally healthy position,” he said.
“It’s growing top line, middle line and bottom line so I think those are three really good indicators that we’re doing a lot of things right.”
Despite the current cost of living pressures, geopolitical volatility and heightened travel demand amid staff shortages, Stark is excited about what’s next for Flight Centre and the travel industry.
“What keeps me up at night is seasonality returning, pressures on the economy, interest rates going up – I think that’s going to take its toll,” he said.
“As airlines start to bring back more capacity, the dream is travel becomes a lot cheaper because it’s been very expensive for varying reasons, but I think the pressure on the economy will result in pressure on pricing.
“The real brand competition will kick in and we will be inundated with this perfect amount of demand so I’m looking forward to when it gets back to some level of normality.
“The exciting thing is that travel’s back with a vengeance and we have to capitalise on what’s ahead for us.”
