Flight Centre backs technology as travel takes off

Flight Centre has backed investments in platforms, data and analytics as key support mechanisms for the company as pandemic-driven headwinds ease.

Some of the most effective digital investment has come in the consumer business, with Flight Centre Leisure CEO James Kavanagh highlighting the importance of digital operations to that segment’s post-Covid recovery.

Kavanagh said Flight Centre “didn’t waste this crisis”, but rather took the opportunity to adopt an omnichannel model.

The aim of its omnichannel work is to let customers “move seamlessly from online, to the app, to in-store”, interacting with a single checkout.

“I’m really pleased to say that program of work is on track”, Kavanagh said.

Online bookings doubled to 24 percent of Flight Centre’s leisure business in recent months, and Kavanagh said “60 percent of our customer journey now starts on mobile”.

The organisation also recently deployed an AI bot known as “Annie”, which is designed to use Flight Centre’s data assets to work out what offers to put in front of customers “when they’re most likely to buy”.

Flight Centre Leisure’s backend has also been reworked.

“In our leisure business, we’re on a journey to be more productive,” Kavanagh said.

“We’re operating the business with half the previous number of systems we use.”

The Helio booking system, unveiled last year, also supports staff productivity, Kavanagh said.

“What we’re seeing now is that our consultants are two times as productive at a booking level”, he said, while new staff become productive more quickly.

Chris Galanty, CEO of Flight Centre’s corporate segment, said AI and analytics “backed up with great data” is helping grow sales through the company’s third party channels, letting the company present “the right content via the right channel to the right customer at the right time”.

Flight Centre has reported full-year 2022 revenue of more than $1 billion, while losses narrowed significantly, from $602 million to $378 million.