Flight Centre will open two new shops in September, but the business has suggested it will think carefully before pursuing any further retail expansion.
A branch in Horsham, West Sussex, is set to welcome customers on September 4, becoming the agency’s 14th branch, with a store in London’s South Molton Street, Mayfair, expected to open towards the end of the month.
The long-haul and tailor-made specialist, which had 80 stores pre-pandemic, is now focusing its UK retail efforts on the southeast of England, according to Flight Centre Travel Group’s managing director for the EMEA region.
Steve Norris said: “We’re being tactical about thinking where our customers live and work.”
He added: “We’re not going to get back to opening up lots and lots of high street stores tucked around corners and all that. We’re not mass market.”
Flight Centre reduced its retail network to 12 stores in 2020, with the number of agents falling from around 500 to 150.
“We’ve really concentrated on the southeast of England,” said Norris. “We still look after our clients from all over the country, but in terms of our shop presence now it concentrates on London [and nearby locations].”
The business previously had plans to considerably increase the number of leisure staff, but Norris suggested that proposal had been shelved.
“We’ll only add agents where we need to,” he said, describing the agency’s approach to growth as “customer recovery-led”.
The post-pandemic spike in enquiry figures had slowed down, Norris said, having previously hit 25% growth year on year.
“We won’t be blindly opening up five stores a year, for example, if we don’t think there will be an enquiry return from customers valuing that walk-in experience,” Norris said.
The existing network has recorded two-thirds of the turnover achieved in 2019, Norris said, helped by pent-up demand among “premium leisure travellers”.
“They’ve had two years of not being able to go anywhere. Now they really want to make sure they’re enjoying their leisure time.”
Norris spoke to Travel Weekly after Flight Centre Travel Group published its results for the Australian financial year 2023.