Flight Centre confident of store potential
Flight Centre has pointed to the success of its Brisbane Hyperstore launched last year as a sign that the retail store model is “alive and well”.
The flagship store, which opened in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall in October, is the retailer’s largest outlet in Australia and its second hyperstore with the first in Perth’s Hay Street Mall. It holds up to 70 sales consultants across 580 square metres making it between 10 and 12 times the size of a regular store.
“The store has been profitable since month one,” chief operating officer Melanie Waters-Ryan told analysts earlier this week. “That’s reinforces that the retail model is alive and well.”
Elements of the new hyperstore design will be rolled out across its existing network, with brochures continuing to hold an important place due to consumer demand.
“Interestingly customers love a brochure, so moving to a completely online model is not what customers are wanting,” Waters-Ryan revealed.
Nonetheless, online is an area that is growing in importance for the retailer as part of its “blended” model, although it stressed it will not be “heavily” promoting that distribution channel.
“For us, it’s all about our customers making the choice,” Waters-Ryan said. “We are creating a proposition for our customers that we’re always open.”
She was confident that any further weakening of the Australian dollar would not impact the business, with no downturn as yet being seen.
Instead, an increase in the number of flights into and out of Australia over the last 10 years along with the availability of a wider range of stock and product, is keeping the market healthy.
“It’s nothing to do with the dollar, it’s the availability of flights and the competition that this creates around pricing,” she said.
Meanwhile, Waters-Ryan said little impact had been felt as a result of the launch of Helloworld in the retail space.
“The campaign only just kicked off in the last two weeks,” she said. “It’s traditionally a very busy time for enquiries and we’re not seeing a lot of change to that.
“It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to get Helloworld on the market place – we shall see.”
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
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