Flight Centre

My work will be based on Flight Centre travel agent and I will be talking about their products and services, how they work, the importance of the technology for the company, how they advertise their services and about the company’s competitors. Flight Centre Travel Group is an Australian based international travel company, founded by Graham Turner in 1981. In 1982 they opened their first store in Sidney, today they have about 689 Flight Centre stores in Australia and about 2000 overseas stores across 11 countries, Which are New Zealand, the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA (where it is spelt Flight Center), India (where it is known as Flight Shop), Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Dubai.

The Flight Centre brand includes specialist business travel consultants focused on business travel for small to medium enterprises with infrequent travel needs and a group travel consultants focused on managing all aspects of travel including car hire with companies such as Avis, EuropCar, Hertz, they work closely with hotels, they do holiday packages to a lot of countries in the 5 different continents including luxury holidays, first class to economic flights, cruises, ski holidays, sport holidays last minute hotel deals, travel insurance, coach tours, besides flights they also have rail companies such as BritRail, AmTrack, Blue Rail that travel to Australia and other countries, they also provide travel with The UK train etc., they help with visas, traveller’s cheques, frequent flyer points redemption and they also have their travel shop where they sell books, maps, electronics and luggage & bags. Importance of technology

Although Flight Centre has lots of travel agents around different countries, they still relay on internet and their website to promote their product and services, to sell their holidays, hotel rooms and extras such as car hire and travel insurance. With the new computer, reservations and online booking systems Flight centre is able to provide different methods and ways of getting products and services to their customers such as using their website to allow their customers to view and edit their booking, reserve and buy extras. Installing devices such as kiosk, webcams and like has helped Flight Centre to combat the intangibility of their products. For example, they can now provide videos of the different destinations they travel to, photos of the cars they have for hire, hotel rooms etc. Mass media and communication

Flight centre used to mainly rely on word of mouth to market to travellers, due to the intangible and experiential nature of the products and services they provide, such as holiday packages to South America, ski holidays, hotels etc. Flight centre uses guides, magazines and their high street travel agencies to promote the products and services they offer, they also use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, to advertise their deals, events and competitions. Trip advisor is also a social network they use in order to provide travellers with a gateway to the opinions and recommendations of millions of people. With the sheer amount of information available on internet and the speed at which news and information travel, Flight centre is forced to be always up to destinations changes, updates etc. in order to give the right information to their customer, make arrangements to the destination they may travel to due to economic or social issues.

Price of the goods/service
Setting prices correctly requires careful consideration, prices are not just set by customer demand but also modified by competition as business are unable to charge more for the same type of service than their competitors, if they do so they may risk losing customers or not attracting then. For example if customers compare the fares offered by Flight Centre and another airline flying from the same destination, these will tend to be very similar as they need to ensure competitiveness. According to Flight Centre website (http://www.flightcentre.com.au/lowest-airfare-guarantee-faqs) they have the cheapest airfares that originate/depart from Australia, and if not, customers can ask for price beat in writing showing the quotes. Flight Centre will then analyse and price beat by $1 per person. In some circumstances they could also fly for free if Flight Centre doesn’t find a cheapest fare for them.

There are various pricing policies Flight Centre use, among there are market penetration, market skimming pricing or the most common, such as competitive pricing, variable pricing or discounted pricing. For example Flight Centre discount a full price of their services to encourage particular types of customers such as regular customers. Flight Centre also have special offers, which tend to be valid for a specific period of time only and introduced to encourage people to book holidays with them for example city breaks to New York, or cruise to the Caribbean. Flight Centre also use seasonal and variable pricing to stimulate sales in quite seasons and maximise profit in high seasons such as in Winter Sun holidays. Flight Centre as many of the other travel agents advertises their holidays, flights deals on their website page, in their retail travel agencies on street, on social media such as Facebook and twitter, newspaper, magazines and TV.

Competitors
Flight Centre has many competitors that offers the same products such as STA, Trail Finders, Koon, etc., but what makes them different is the services they provide and how they do it. Flight Centre does provide almost everything, flights, accommodation, excursions, extras such as car hire, travel insurance etc. Their consultants have genuine passion for travel, they are all experienced and already travelled to different countries, so they are able to offer their customers with a lot of more information with their personal experiences, what makes them authentic experts. Flight Centre has a lot of high street stores across the country, what makes them very accessible to their customers, it is also easy to read their website and understand.

Flight Centre offer the widest choice of worldwide airfares on sale in the UK and they guarantee to offer the cheapest scheduled airfares to their customers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, the UK, and South Africa, and if they cannot find the cheapest fare for their customers online, they could travel for free. Flight centre allows customers to reserve they booking for up to 24hours, they also have 24/7 Emergency Assist whilst travelling and all holidays booked through them are ATOL protected

References:

http://www.flightcentrelimited.com/our-brands/leisure/flight-centre accessed 06/10/2014

https://www.linkedin.com/company/flight-centre accessed 20/10/2014 BETEC travel and tourism Elise James, Joanne Thirlaway & Ursula Woodhouse.
(page.85-86) accessed 24.10.2014 http://www.flightcentre.com.au/lowest-airfare-guarantee-faqs- accessed 24/10/2014 http://www.flightcentre.com/ – 27/10/2014

http://www.flightcentre.com.au/rail/companies – 27/10/2014
Flight Centre assistant manager, New street store – accessed 27.10.2014