Skroo spills on the future of Flight Centre

Skroo spills on the future of Flight Centre
By Tara Harrison


Off the back of the first ever Turner Report, Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner had some predictions for the future of the travel industry.

On the matter of Flight Centre’s stores, Turner said that they had the “footprint right”.

The retail space will always be a challenge, Turner said, citing the struggle of fashion houses.

“The shopfront will be an important thing for us in the next 20 years.”

“We will continue to evolve and there’s always a cost element in that – people come to us for expertise and end experience as much as anything so we don’t have to make it an experience in itself but you have to make it a friendly, inviting inspiring place,” Turner said.

“We won’t have dancing girls or anything like that.”

With no further store expansion flagged for Australia, Flight Centre is looking to go deeper into their offering.

“The in-destination stuff is where we’ll be growing in the next 15-20 years and owning the local product for less,” Turner said.

With reduced yield on flights, Turner was pragmatic.

“The yield is coming back – we’ve just got to get more productive and more transactions per person over a long period of time,” Turner said.

“That is about expertise and also about technology and improving productivity.”

“One of our biggest problems in any sort of retail marketing is how do you get the customers? [There’s] so many messages across digital and social that it’s harder to get their message to their customers,” Turner said.

Flight Centre’s biggest ticketing month is February, off the back of deals at Flight Centre expos.

“They were more well attended this year than they have ever been. The expos are phenomenally valuable,” Flight Centre Executive General Manager of Leisure, Tom Walley, said.

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