Sydney is the next major Australian city to receive Flight Centre’s ‘hyper store’, with plans to open the Apple-inspired agency on George Street between the Hilton Hotel & Lowes.
It’s the sixth ‘hyper store’ for the Australian market, following Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Darwin and Adelaide – the Adelaide store opens next month.
The agency group will spend some $1 million to recreate the 1,013 sq m space sitting opposite the iconic Queen Victoria Building.
Tom Walley, Flight Centre’s Executive General Manager of Leisure said the store will be positioned as a destination shop, similar to that of the successful Apple stores, The Australian reported.
The Sydney hyperstore will be the company’s sixth.
The announcement comes less than 48 hours after the company downgraded its profit expectations due to a slow down in leisure sales.
Hoping to drive more holiday bookings, the three-level space will have around 130 staff on hand – that’s 23 times the size of your average Flight Centre agency.
“This is the first in Sydney but there will be more.”
Graham Turner, Flight Centre MD
“We do them for a couple of reasons: to showcase our businesses, in some respects they are a little bit like Apple stores,” Mr Walley added.
“We want to create destinations for customers. We are looking at Sydney which is a huge destination for us globally, we plan to send a lot of passengers from North America, Europe and London to Sydney.”
Expected to open in December, the store will showcase Flight Centre’s brands, product lines and will even have spaces were customers can interact with print brochures, digital screens and staff.
The store will have 130 staff on hand.
Mr Walley said the company is even considering opening a coffee shop to make it more socially appealing.
“We have a 14m frontage on the store. We will constantly refresh that with travel related product.”
Tom Walley, Flight Centre Executive General Manager of Leisure
“Airlines will bring in their latest product and showcase it, and we will hold weekly exhibitions of product.
“We host 50-100 people and do an evening on river cruising.” The store will be used as a hub “so people can come and experience travel products and touch and feel the product we sell and speak to product experts.”
