The power of international footprints for Flight Centre

“A lot of people think of Flight Centre as the red and white stores, but we are so much more than that,” said the company’s global treasurer Richard Humphreys as he reflected upon on the business’ journey over the last few years.

With HSBC’s support, Flight Centre has been able to adapt to challenges and implement innovative changes.

What started off as a relationship between a global giant in the travel industry and a global bank was cemented during the Covid pandemic as the travel industry faced a complete shutdown.

Flight Centre and HSBC both have large international footprints—it’s what brings us together. Flight Centre is headquartered in Australia and HSBC in London.

Humphreys has been at the forefront of the relationship with HSBC, which began in 2008 and has grown across the globe.

“We are a global business operating in over 25 countries now, with partners in another 70. We are a truly diversified business operating across leisure travel and corporate travel.”

Changes in the company’s business model were tested during the pandemic when they faced uncertainty. The solution? Having a global banking partner that was able to look at things holistically.

Our global relationship and GPS advisory team based in Australia centrally managed the pandemic’s impact on the group and the team worked with HSBC’s UK and Europe relationship director Richard Pye and his team to decide which solutions could be provided in the specific locations they covered.

“We supported the business with a working capital solution in the UK which supported the funding provided to the Group managed out of Australia.

“We then took information from various markets where HSBC operates, predominantly the UK, Europe, and North America, and updated the senior management team”.

Humphreys added: “We think of ourselves as a global business. Whatever market we operate in, we expect to have the same functionality and access to products, ability to pay people and collect money, as we do in every other country. It is critical that we have the right banking partner there.”

As Flight Centre came out of the pandemic, the digital landscape was their priority. “The digital transformation has changed how we approach payments, collections and how we run our business,” said Humphreys.

“HSBC is a trusted advisor in that space and the team have been involved in all aspects as we work through solutions.

“We started to take a consultative approach to our relationship with Flight Centre, and the opportunity for change led to a transformation in the travel group’s treasury journey.

“They challenge HSBC every single day about the ways that they want to take Flight Centre's business forward. For HSBC it has been about how can we do something differently that really enhances that proposition and that relationship,” said Pye.

The uncertainty of the pandemic helped Flight Centre see that they needed “better control” of their payments and visibility of cash flows, said Humphreys.

Our solution was building a payments factory for Flight Centre that efficiently gathers all the business’s non-travel payments in one place.

HSBC’s global client advisor James Conway was part of the team building the solutions: “The close collaboration of global HSBC teams allowed us to deliver immediate action with new solutions, including a Payment Factory, for controlling cash flow. Flight Centre relied on HSBC for treasury thought leadership, planning and change management.”

While Humphreys added: “The payments factory is a big focus for us. It is integrating all our systems in one place, rather than lots of spaghetti diagrams of integration all over the place.
“In turn, this helps control payments and leverage all cash flow.”

Trust is the glue holding together the strong relationship between HSBC and Flight Centre.

“The relationship with HSBC is one of our strongest and most trusted relationships as a business,” said Humphreys. “It is an integrated, holistic relationship with lots of different tentacles across our business, but the trust is absolutely critical to me - and the long-term thinking.”