Thanks to fast-growing international business, the Flight Centre Travel Group says it’s no longer solely dependent on Australian operations or leisure business to drive its overall growth.
But that doesn’t mean Flight Centre Travel Group’s (FCTG) Managing Director, Graham Turner, is giving up on the region or the travel sector any time.
Speaking at the company’s Annual General Meeting, Turner revealed that FCTG is now “very much a global company”, with the international business expected to deliver around 50 percent of total earnings for the 2019 financial year.
Global growth was attributed to a strong launch into the new year, while on the other hand, Australia experienced a rough start due to disruption in leisure sales caused by wage negotiations and the ABC report alleging the group of underpaying staff.
Turner admitted that thanks to the scale of international operations, the group no longer relies “solely on the Australian business and leisure business in particular to drive overall growth”.
In saying that, the Managing Director stressed that Australia is still “very important” to the group and strategies have been put in place to improve performance in the market, particularly in the leisure sector.
Among these initiatives include targeting a new leisure revenue stream through Flight Centre Exclusives (a flash, last minute package holiday range); Captain Packages (featuring Price Drop Protection); and Journeys & Escapes (package ranges initially created in the UK).
Although Flight Centre’s leisure sales will “remain predominantly offline”, the group is looking to attract more online bookings on top of the 20 percent growth achieved during FY18. This will be done by launching “new, and enhanced native app” as well as digital solutions such as Umapped that’ll help Agents and client collaborate online.
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