Flight Centre has doubled its global corporate sales in the last three years as the travel firm looks to accelerate its growth around the world.
The Australian company, which owns the FCM Travel Solutions and Corporate Traveller, said that it made business travel bookings worth more than Aus $2 billion (£1.35 billion) in the second half of 2012, and plans to grab a bigger share of the market in both the UK and the US.
Flight Centre made an overall pre-tax profit of Aus $129.5 million (£88 million) for the six months to the end of December 2012 – a rise of 8 per cent on the previous year. Total transaction value (TTV) also increased by 7 per cent to Aus $6.6 billion (£4.5 billion) across its divisions.
Managing director Graham Turner said: “Australia and the UK are now entrenched as the company’s largest and second largest profit generators and again delivered record EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) in challenging trading conditions to underpin Flight Centre’s overall growth.”
Turner added that it had benefited from the strategy to increase its presence in the corporate travel market.
“Globally, the corporate businesses turned over more than Aus $2 billion (£1.35 billion), with the Australian business contributing more than Aus $1 billion (£670 million) for the first time during a first half,” he said.
“These figures, which do not include the sales generated by FCM licensee network in 70 other countries, highlight the company’s emergence as Australia’s largest corporate travel manager and one of the world’s leading players in this sector.”
The latest developments include FCM Locate, which is a new tracking tool, and the introduction later this year of FCM Mobile which will give travellers access to their itineraries, flight notifications and check-in through their smartphones.
Flight Centre wants to double its corporate travel sales in the UK by June 2017 as part of a five-year strategic plan. FCM was ranked as the fifth largest UK TMC in 2011 with gross sales of £407 million according to BBT’s list of the Top 50 Leading TMCs published last year.
“Priorities are to offset the effects of corporate client down-trading by winning new accounts and to continue building the operational and technological platforms required to fast track growth through to 2017,” said the company in its trading update.
Flight Centre is also targeting the US for major expansion into corporate travel over the next few years as it plans to extend its operations to 15 cities.
“Corporate Traveller has opened in Philadelphia and Houston in the past three months and expansion into Denver and San Diego has been scheduled for the fourth quarter,” added Flight Centre.
“The company has earmarked 10 additional cities for possible expansion in the medium term and sees the large but fragmented US corporate market as a major growth opportunity.”