Flight Centre Global Managing Director Andrew Stark calls the current boom in travel advisor business the “Renaissance of the travel agent”. If that’s the case, Flight Centre could well play the part of da Vinci – i.e. its leading figure.
Within the Flight Centre brand, there’s a lot of talk about BC/AC (before COVID/after COVID). BC, business at Flight Centre was good. AC, business is … even better.
The comeback, however, is about more than just a post-pandemic population returning to travel, and travel advisors. Yes, business is “bouncing back” big time, says Brisbane-based Stark. But at an intimate get-together between Flight Centre’s senior executive team and media, Stark told Karryon the brand was also “rebuilding back smarter”.
Most importantly, the pandemic has fine-tuned Flight Centre’s management of costs.
Around that, there’s been a change in its leadership structure – to a more centralised unit – but most significantly, the Flight Centre brand has downsized. Or as Stark says, “rightsized” its business across all of its channels.
“The Flight Centre brand is a very, very different brand to what it was BC,” he told guests at the event, saying Flight Centre was now a third of its pre-pandemic size.
“So a third of its size from a shop perspective and a third of its size from a staffing perspective.”
Being omnipresent
“For the first time” the brand is also now talking “very strongly” about providing customers with more options for bookings.
“We’re not just trying to push customers into a shopping environment,” Stark says.
“We’re actually saying to customers, you now have a choice across online, our bricks and mortar as well as our specialist teams.”
With this new approach, Stark says the Flight Centre brand has “actually seen productivity increase … between 120 per cent to 140 per cent … at the coalface”.
“It’s unprecedented, what we’re seeing right now. If you go to any of our shops in Australia, you’ll see on the weekend, we’ve got queues out of the doors.”
Thanks to this new nimbleness, Flight Centre has also seen its online business grow four-fold.
“BC, five per cent of our volume was online – 95 per cent of our volume came from bricks and mortar,” Stark said.
“Today, about 20 per cent of our volume is online, 20 per cent of our volume are specialist teams and around 60 per cent of our volume is from our shop network.”
Further to this, Stark talks about delivering a truly “Omni” retail experience for customers, where Flight Centre sits as a hybrid of traditional and online businesses.
“We don’t see a traditional OTA coming in and opening 500 world-class locations, and neither do we see a traditional travel company going and spending the type of money we spend in the tech space.”
“We are heavily investing in product management engineering, and heavily investing in our marketing landscape for the brand as well.”
A shift in interest
Stark also talks about how the brand’s client base is evolving.
“The brand has started to modernise and is starting to talk to a younger customer demographic – and even the cheekiness and the savviness and the quickness of the brand, which Clinton [Hearne], our head of global marketing refers to, is starting to resonate quite well with a younger demographic.”
As recently as six months ago, Stark said it was difficult to imagine the business would be where it is today.
“But one thing is for sure … travel is back.”
Overall, the brand was seeing “unprecedented demand … or a purple patch and we just can’t keep up with the enquiries and demand going through”.
Recent numbers also back that up.
“Year to date, [there have been] between 1.5 and 1.6 million bookings in the Flight Centre brand around the world – that’s up until the end of March of this year,” Stark says.
“That’s unprecedented – for a third of our size and our network and our staff complement. We really are punching well above our weight.”
For more information, visit Flight Centre.
Also, check out our interview with Flight Centre Travel Group Global Leisure CEO James Kavanagh.
