Flight Centre announces big leadership shake-up

Photography by andre&dominqiue
By James Harrison


Flight Centre Travel Group (FLT) has amended its global leadership structure as travel returns coming out of the pandemic.

This update will see FLT’s leisure and supply chief executive officer (CEO), Melanie Waters-Ryan, focus solely on her role as supply CEO as the company gains momentum with travel returning.

In particular, Waters-Ryan will be responsible for supplier relationships and commercial arrangements, product procurement and delivery, and FLT’s wholesale business.

She will also play a role in developing and integrating TP Connects (TPC) business.

According to Flight Centre, TPC aims to aggregate content from multiple sources and direct feeds from low-cost carriers, emerging supplier-direct channels, and other third party New Distribution Capability aggregators.

“The supply and distribution area of travel are rapidly evolving and are critical to our long-term success,” Waters-Ryan said.

“I look forward to focusing on the emerging opportunities we see in supply and working closely with the leisure and corporate businesses to deliver new and improved products to our people and customers and increased sales to our travel industry partners.”

FLT’s current managing director, James Kavanagh, will also become the company’s global leisure CEO, with Chris Galanty continuing as global corporate CEO.

Kavanagh, Waters-Ryan, and Galanty will all continue to report to the company’s global CEO and managing director, Graham Turner.

“This is an important step in our business’s evolution and means we will now have dedicated CEOs responsible for each of our three business divisions – corporate travel, leisure travel and supply,” Turner said.

“Having three senior executives focussed solely on these key areas will help ensure we successfully execute our growth strategies and capitalise on opportunities across all areas of the business during the post-pandemic recovery, which is now well and truly underway.”

Kavanagh said he’s excited by the challenge of leading FLT as the company celebrates its 40th birthday.

“Our shop network, which remains highly accessible, and our people are at the heart of this business, but they are now contemplated by highly scalable online, call centre and independent contractor offerings that have been strengthened during the pandemic,” Kavanagh said.

“These businesses are performing well and are likely to be key future growth drivers, along  with the premium travel sector and with the impending introduction of true omni-channel  capabilities in Flight Centre brand, which will allow customers to move seamlessly between  our on and offline channels.”

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