Flight Centre Travel Group’s top achievers celebrated and partied together over the weekend for their annual Global Gathering ‘Flight Fest 2018’, held this year in Berlin.
Around 3,000 top achieving staff from all area’s of the company made the ‘party express’ journey to Germany’s capital of glamour and grit for the weekend, travelling from every corner of the Flight Centre Travel Group globe.
As always, Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) picked up the MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR TAB – Factoring in of course the huge contribution that all of the preferred suppliers pitched in as a reward and thank you to those special ones that smashed this year’s goals.
Now that’s what you call an incentive worth striving to achieve. Because this happens EVERY YEAR and is a reward that any staff member regardless of their role can win.
The incentive package included: Return airfares (often on chartered flights with many sitting in Business and First as these lucky folk found out thanks to Etihad Airways), hotel accomm, transfers and all the food and booze you could consume in three days.
But more than that… Experiencing all of the awesome entertainment and the priceless, status boosting privilege of ACTUALLY BEING THERE.
SO WHAT WENT DOWN THIS YEAR?
Berlin’s immigration stamps started getting a good workout earlier in the week as the first revellers began arriving from Australia, New Zealand, the U.S, Asia and beyond.
By Friday morning the red ink was turning pink as droves more giddy Flighties came to say “Guten tag” with their party boots on.
JETLAG? NEIN WAY!
After hitting the museums, shops, beer gardens and bikes (some combined both on the famous ‘Bier bikes’), driving Trabant’s around Berlin’s old wall and Checkpoint Charlie and taking in the city’s many iconic landmarks and turbulent history with a gazillion selfies and team ‘grams’, it was off to the Mercedes Benz Arena for the welcome party on Friday night.
The Berlin ‘Uber grunge’ themed night delivered a perfect start that featured highlights DJ Jonas Blue and Duke Dumont and kicked on into the early hours. How good were the confetti spray pics btw?
You can read all about it here.
And then all of a sudden, it was Saturday morning. Groan. Which for the delegates, meant backing up and physically dragging their blurry-eyed selves back to the Mercedes Arena for a re-energising day of keynote speakers and inspiration.
If they’d even left the Arena from the night before that was – Rumour has it some hadn’t, while a few others pedalled it back on those ‘Bier bikes’ again.
Those that did manage to beat the jet lag and stay awake on Saturday afternoon, even with the ‘Wurst’ hangovers ever heard from Flight Centre royalty, suppliers and keynote celebs such as Aussie heartthrob Chris (aka Thor) Hemsworth. That man gets everywhere doesn’t he?
English comedian, actor, and TV presenter Michael Macintyre hosted a panel interviewing Chris Hemsworth alongside comedians Jimmy Carr and Claudia O’Doherty who together entertained the crowd and had them in raptures of laughter.
Onto and into Saturday night. The big kahuna and award ball, where 3,000 frocked up Flighties filled the arena and every (Flight Centre United) nation got seriously patriotic, waving and wearing flags and competing to see who could sing the loudest and proudest and wear their hearts on their sleeves.
Company chief, God-like Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner led the proceedings to rapturous applause, awards were handed out en-masse, thousands of photos were taken, people lost their voices, their minds and often their friends in the crowd.
It was a chaos of the best possible kind and was a night of legend where anyone who was there will tell you (loudly) that they LOVE their job.
Best recruitment ad for FCTG ever?
Once the formalities were over, everyone continued to gossip about who the headline act could be. Many guesses and bets were made (including us here at KARRYON weeks ago which by the way we got right – just sayin’) and then BOOM!
First on stage was U.S artist and Brand USA Ambassador Aloe Blacc who probably won’t “Need a dollar” after this gig.
And then, ‘On a night like this’, her ladyship KYLIE! shimmied onto the stage like a glittering Princess and belted out all of the tunes everyone wanted to hear, sending the already ‘flying high’ crowd into orbit.
“KYLIE AT GLOBAL?!”
Rest assured that the rest of the night (and morning) would have been one big Berlin blur.
By late Sunday; Some Flighties would already have been painfully re-packing their bags and making their way back to Berlin’s Tegel airport to say “Auf Wiedersehen” before flying back to Australia and beyond, wondering if any of that actually happened.
Was it just a dream that left them all ‘spinning around’ in departures?
Was it the best global ever? Most definitely say the masses. Until Las Vegas next year anyway.
Better get working on that incentive people.
READ: CHRIS HEMSWORTH chats with Flight Centre Agents at GLOBAL GATHERING
READ: GLOBAL GATHERING: Flight Centre Agents take off to Berlin on an Etihad A380
READ: TUNE IN: Travel Agents show how its done on Flight Centre’s latest TV series
