Flight Centre Travel Group’s corporate brands reported a 3 percent increase in transaction volume in the first quarter of its fiscal year, despite “a flat market globally,” CEO Graham Turner said at the company’s recent annual meeting.
The growth has been driven by account wins, with Flight Centre’s FCM brand winning accounts with a combined total of $350 million in annual spending in the period from July through October, v said. The group’s small-and-midsized-client-focused Corporate Traveler brand “also continues to secure a large volume of wins,” though it’s difficult to put a number on them because smaller clients “are not bound by contracts and do not typically enforce strict policies to ensure all travel is booked through their preferred provider,” he said.
Turner noted Flight Centre’s corporate brands have grown to be the group’s largest division in terms of total transaction value, with FCM the group’s largest global brand, generating 31 percent of its TTV in the 2024 fiscal year, which ended June 30. In the 2019 fiscal year, it represented 20 percent of the group’s TTV.
The group’s strategy on customer retention and growth “supercharged the business’s recovery to about 135 percent of its pre-Covid size by the end of [the 2024 fiscal year], without major acquisitions and well ahead of the overall industry’s rebound, which was estimated to be circa 80 percent of pre-Covid activity at year-end,” according to Turner.
Across the group, Turner said there has been “airfare deflation” in recent months, with average international fares sold via global distribution systems in Australia in the first quarter of the fiscal year down 9 percent year over year. While that has lowered revenues, that ultimately is “very positive” for the business, he said.
“They are starting to stimulate sales, as evidenced by a 15 percent increase in international airfares sold in Australia during the first quarter, a growth rate that was maintained in October,” Turner said.
