Flight Centre taps technology for cost control

Flight Centre Travel Group said it has still been able to invest in technology and other growth opportunities despite cost and margin pressures.

The travel agency declared total operating expenses of $2.033 billion as it invested in future growth drivers across people, products, network, technology and sustainability.

Under technology, Flight Centre invested in FCM Travel and digital booking and management platform, Melon, incorporating new features.

It also spent on a portal offering independent agents 'single-door' access to its suite of tools.

In its leisure and corporate brands, the company said it is pushing innovation by investing in an improved customer experience and using artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA).

In its full-year results on Wednesday, Flight Centre’s corporate CEO Chris Galanty also said its corporate total transaction value (TTV) reached $11 billion over the year, with $4 billion directly attributed to its corporate strategy.

Galanty said the company wanted to unlockl productivity gains and customer growth.

“This means that we're launching a productive operation strategy really to deliver better customer consistency, better productivity, more automation, digitisation and better returns to profitability," he said.

He added the company has onboarded “more than 1000 people this year” with the business now “fully right-sized with full staffing globally”

Galanty also said the company has a “very strong pipeline of potential customers right now” leading to “greater efficiency and economies of scale”.

“But further than that, we want to invest heavily, as I said, in our productive operations to make sure that we're investing more in streamlining and standardising systems and making sure we introduce even more automation into our business.

“All of that leads to increased margin improvement, both from a cost and income side.

"Also we're investing in new services that we can generate new revenue from by solving more customer problems.”

He also said all of its new customers “have been going straight on to the FCM platform” with all current customers to “be migrated on to a new technology this year”.

Group total transaction value (TTV) is up 112 percent to $21.9 billion, its second strongest full-year result after FY19.

The company also recorded underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $301.6 million, a 265 percent year-on-year improvement.