Flight Centre taps Melissa Elf as MD for corporate travel division

The Flight Centre Travel Group has named senior leader Melissa Elf as managing director of all its corporate divisions across both Australia and New Zealand.

Having been in the travel industry for more than 25 years, Elf has spent the past 16 years within the corporate business holding various senior leadership roles across account management, sales, and operations and will also retain her current role as leader of the FCM brand within Australia.

“The structure change isn’t too dissimilar to how we’ve been operating throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – it’s more formalising things so we can really grow, and grow fast, moving forward,” Elf said.

“What we really want to focus on is bringing together a leadership team across the two countries that will create a genuine sense of belonging for our people and we want to ensure there are some great brightness of future opportunities for our employees as we emerge from COVID.

“Importantly, we want to solve customer problems.

“A priority for us is to always deliver the highest possible service level and that will be a key pillar as we look to win more business – along with the amazing technology offerings we have and the incredible experience we have as thought leaders.”

Elf said Flight Centre Corporate was the largest travel management company across Australia and New Zealand when you looked at all the brands as a collective.

“We want to maintain and grow that position. Business is coming back so quickly and we’re already back at high-80’s of pre-COVID volumes across the ANZ region,” she said.

“We’ve won a lot of business over the last couple of years, which is a huge credit to our wider teams, but we’ve also retained 98 per cent of our customers so we’re really focused on growing out of this.”

CEO Corporate Travel Chris Galanty said Elf was the perfect candidate to navigate Flight Centre Corporate through the post-pandemic world and beyond.

“We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Mel into the role. Australia and New Zealand together are such important parts of our business – not just for our heritage but for our future as well. It’s fantastic to have someone with such a wealth of experience taking the reins,” Galanty said.

“We continue to deal with the COVID recovery but there are some really exciting things happening in the corporate sphere, so the outlook is incredibly bright as we move forward together as one.”

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Chris Galanty corporate travel fcm flight centre Melissa Elf The Flight Centre Travel Group