Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for Flight Centre Travel Group's FY 2021 Full Year Result. Today, I'm joined by the usual crew Adam Campbell, our CFO Chris Galanti, our Global Corporate CEO, Mel Waters Ryan, our Global Leisure CEO and of course, Graeme Turner, our Managing Director. Going to start things off with a few introductory words before handing over to Adam and progressing through. Thanks, Drew.
Thanks, Tayo. Yes, good morning, everyone. This is Drew here. I'm in hotel quarantine in New South Wales, day 14, I hope. Yes.
We all know 2021 has been a tough year for travel in general. And Flight Centre, I'm afraid We're no different, but we do see some light appearing now at the end of the tunnel. As an organization, we've gone from emergency cost slashing in the Q4 of last year The maintenance of those significantly reduced expenses, somewhere around that 65%, 70% of old expenses. And at the same time, we're developing and implementing our technology, improving productivity and fine tuning our recovery Strategies which will inevitably come, the recovery I mean. So some countries where we have strong corporate presence and growth as well as a significant leisure presence are already coming back strongly and we'll hear a bit about that later, particularly in the domestic markets.
This is the current picture in the USA, Canada and Europe and we can see very clearly when lockdowns are lifted, borders open, Travel bounces back very quickly. Recently, and that was in July 12, I traveled to the UK for a month working from there with Chris and Steve, Chris is on the call now, Steve and our North American leaders, Charlene and Mark came over from Boston, New York. So we have face to face meetings, strategy presentations, etcetera. Now both the U. S.
And UK, although they've got Large case numbers, life is back to normal. We just talked about before, I think the only thing in London You have to do now is wear a mask on some public transport. And this is a picture hopefully we'll see in Australia and New Zealand shortly as We've dropped that elimination strategy. It's already been talked about by most of the politicians. And of course, we get a majority of people Which we're pretty close to at the moment as well.
So Flight Centre Travel Group is a very diversified global travel company We want to stay that way. We've got 3 main divisions, leisure, corporate and supply and travel, as well as a few other areas. And we believe in this being a diversified global travel business. It's enormous value to us and it's great advantage to our major suppliers as well as If you talk to them, I'll tell you that. Also, one of our features is our stable, very capable, very experienced and pretty Intelligent or fairly intelligent anyway, leadership team here and overseas.
And they played a major role in getting us to where we are now. And I know they'll play a major role in our future success. Their average tenure with Flight Centre Travel Group, there were 5 people presenting today or Talking today here is over 25 years each with Adam, he is the baby. I think he's only been about 15 years. As a team, we've learned a lot over the last 18 months.
And I think the main thing is the importance of being resilient, Being very consistent with the way we work and being as optimistic as possible, so we can see our company through these tough times, but not only through it, but very successfully. Also using these times as an opportunity to improve and streamline our systems, our technology, our operations and our overall business. Although we can't accurately predict the future due to haphazard government restriction decisions, With some exceptions, most of our markets are now living with this pandemic, accepting the virus with us for the long term and we just have to live with it. We're planning as much as we can plan to be back in the black later this financial year and back to 100% of 2019 TD billion revenue by around that month of June 2024, but with importantly significantly reduced Ongoing operating costs. You'll hear some of these plans over the next 30 or so minutes.
Over to you, Adam.
Thanks, Chris. And as Chris said, there are a number of key things that you're going to hear throughout this morning's presentation. Our recovery is gaining momentum with trading conditions generally improving, particularly in the heavily weighted EMEA and Americas regions and within our corporate businesses. We continue to invest to win market share and that investment is working. We're successfully executing corporate and leisure strategies.
And as a result of all of the above, we are ready to capitalize as travel resumes. Sales revenue is typically increasing month on month with record COVID period revenue of $54,000,000 in June. As you see in the graph on Page 4 of the slide deck. The Americas and in particular the U. S.
Business saw significant TTV growth in the final quarter. And in fact, quarter 4 revenue in the U. S. For both leisure and corporate exceeded revenue for those businesses for the entire first half. And those good results continued after year end through July.
Within Australia, corporate TTV has been consistently growing throughout the year. And as you can see in the graphic, leisure revenue has spiked after each domestic border reopening, which shows us that there is a pent up demand and that our brands are resonating with our customers. The UK and Europe have also Sales growth towards the latter part of the financial year as government restrictions are now starting to ease. Throughout the first half of the financial year, as Drew alluded to, our focus was very much on cost reduction and operating in as leaner manner as possible. We were very mindful however not to cut costs to such an extent that it would impede the longer term success of.
And as we progress through the second half and we've seen vaccination rates increasing and signs of government restrictions easing around the world, we have started to further invest in our key growth drivers. In particular, within our corporate businesses, we have deployed game changing new technologies to enhance what was already a compelling customer offering. And in leisure, our investments has been in strengthening the omni channel leisure network as part of our cost effective new growth model. And both Mel and Chris will talk to these strategies in more detail, including the market share growth that these investments are delivering for us already. We've included our most recent trading results for July on Slide 8, which highlights the relative strength of the corporate trading recovery.
Those businesses are now trading at around 40% of pre COVID levels. And you may remember back in January that they were trading at around half that level, that 20%. So subject to further investment in our grow to win strategy that Chris will talk to, we would expect our corporate businesses overall could become profitable at around 50% of previous volumes, excluding the short term government quarantine services that we're currently doing at low margin and which we're not expecting to continue into the long term. Our leisure sales, which you can see on that graphic, which are heavily weighted to the ANZ region are at around about 16% of pre COVID volumes. Given the heavy international and domestic travel restrictions still in place within that region.
In the Americas, where U. S. Citizens are able to travel to the key Mexico and Caribbean markets, volumes have increased above 30%. And again subject to any further investments to servo charge growth as international borders reopen in the Southern Hemisphere, the leisure business should breakeven at around 40% of pre COVID volumes. Pleasingly, the revenue growth through Quarter 4 has been leveraged to EMEA and the Americas regions.
Prior to COVID, these regions were our fastest growing segments and accounted for nearly 40% of our CTVs and 55% of our profits in financial year 2020. Meaning we're extremely well positioned as the Northern Hemisphere markets do continue to open. In terms of liquidity, we have cash and investments at 30 June of $1,400,000,000 which with even the most conservative assumptions of a full working capital unwind, the repayment of the UK COVID loan in full and no further reduction in our monthly cash burn means we have an extended liquidity runway well into calendar year 2023. This financial stability positions us well against our flow reserve. The monthly cash burn Itself was on track to be below $30,000,000 by now prior to the Australian domestic border restrictions starting throughout June and into July.
And in the key market of the Americas, we are approaching a neutral monthly cash burn position. As expected, our second half underlying loss was largely in line with half 1, with the reduction in government subsidies during the half of around $40,000,000 partially offsetting increased revenues of over $75,000,000 we also incurred variable costs of $12,000,000 generating that additional revenue. Throughout the half, we've also seen a number of our brands approaching or achieving breakeven in specific months. So overall from a financial perspective, we've seen a strengthening of our P and L, our balance sheet and our cash flows over the second half of this year, which we expect to continue as we progress through FY22. I'll now hand over to Chris to discuss our corporate strategy in more detail.
Thanks, Adam. Well, rather than run through the numbers as Adam has already done so, I'm just going to take you through 3 things. Firstly, the corporate recovery and how we see it globally, our grow to win strategy, which we focus on customer growth and retention, which is a very pleasing story this year, and an update on our strategic priorities and our overall strategy. So starting with the travel outlook for 2022, we estimate that corporations will turn to roughly 50% to 70% of pre COVID travel in 2022. Now many customers have traveled throughout, we call this essential travel, typical industry such as mining, but we're now seeing in many parts The world's a return to normal business travel may not feel it if you're sitting in Sydney and Melbourne today, but if you're in Europe, UK, North America normality to travel is returning.
We think the last phase really will return will be meetings and events And some internal travel and there's no doubt that some internal travel for some companies will have gone forever, being replaced by digital technology. And this is a good thing. We want We manage our travel customers' travel programs. We want them to be efficient. We want them to be sustainable.
The key factor the corporation is trying to travel, this is what our customers And lastly is when travel is more predictable, when lockdowns don't keep starting and stopping, and that's certainly the pattern we're seeing emerge both in in North America and Europe today. The market has evolved. There's certainly an increased demand for travel management services, particularly in those SME customers that corporate travelers serve. And what this means is prior to COVID, companies were happy for their staff to go and book Travel independently online and submit expenses. We're now hearing from customers and new customers in the SME category But actually they need to know where their travelers are all times, where they're going in advance and have a duty of care program in place.
So a big opportunity for us to grow in the SME space. There's definitely the acceptance now of the need for travelers to be vaccinated, double vaccinated, And most of our companies are well on way to make sure that travelers are vaccinated and can therefore travel. Myself and many of my team be heavily involved in the industry bodies and the good news is that industry bodies whether it's IATA or the travel associations in each region are working closely with governments to make sure that industry wide adoption of global standards is happening. And that hopefully starting Remove some of the friction. Friction is still there in travel, international travel, but it starts to be standardized and automated, which will make travel easier.
From a competition perspective, the big news in the industry in corporate was Amex's acquisition of Egencia. So what The traditional 4 has become 3 and we very much see ourselves as number 4 in that place and 1 now of only 4 companies in the world with our FCM brand that can really manage enterprise travel. And that's great for us. It means that there's less choice in the marketplace and we are consequently seeing a big increase in invitations to RFP in the last 6 months. And traditional competitors who do make up the bulk Of the industry, it's a very fragmented industry, these local regional players often privately owned.
We see that they are and we're hearing this from customers, we see that they are struggling to continue to invest in technology and adapt their business offerings in for a post COVID world, which is very different from the approach we've taken. There's still new entrants in the SME space, there's still VC money going into disruption, and we see that is likely to continue, particularly dislocation of COVID. And this really matches our strategy with Melanin Corporate Travelers. So we feel we're very well placed to be a disruptor and to take advantage of that. So our key priorities in 2021, just to give an update on what we said at the half year on what we delivered.
Number 1 was to win and retain customers to grow our market share. And I'm really pleased that we've done exceptionally well here. So we have grown share. I'm pleased to say today that we've signed new business annual new business of US1.4 billion dollars which is a fantastic number. And also importantly, we had a 98.5% retention rate in our contracted customers' FDM.
So yes, again, this year, we haven't lost a Single large customer globally in FDM, which is again really pleasing. Importantly, of those wins, 70% were in Americas and EMEA. So but really focused on our fast growing regions. We've launched Mellon, a new digital platform for corporate travelers with our customers in the U. S.
Today, getting fantastic feedback, really high NPS scores and the big market launches next month when we timed it for the fall when we thought it would really Chime with the market coming back to travel in September. We continue to develop global data and platform capabilities. So we delivered our global robotics and AI platforms, which I talked about last time. And this is really important because it gives us that understanding of the customer globally, not just in certain markets, and it really enables us adapt our strategies and our customer offering accordingly. FCM continues its truly global business plan, and we have Seeing a new brand launched earlier this year, which has gone down very well in the marketplace and very well with customers.
The new SCM global platform, which I'll talk about shortly, has been launched in China and is being launched in the rest of the world later this year. We continue to invest in data science Capability that's really important as we move our business model into being more of a platform model like most modern Internet companies where we use customer data, behavioral data, not just transactional data to improve their experience and improve our management understanding and our commercialization of volume. We continue to improve productivity, some great gains here. This means we can implement customers faster, which means they trade faster, which means we get the volume faster and also improve the productivity of our systems and our people, which means we can bring fewer costs back when costs are required to come back. We continue to focus on travel supply content.
We are seen as the market global leader in NDC, particularly in the region where it first took off in Europe. And this is really pleasing for our customers. It means we can get the right content to them through any channel. So just a reminder where we play, we uniquely address the market Two brands, which is different from every other major competitor. And we think this is a huge strategic advantage for us.
So and that's simply because in the 2 broad Categorizations of large and enterprise travel and in SME, our customers in those two categories have completely different needs. And we come we address the market with 2 different brands with different value propositions, with different offerings, different products, different technology, different pricing and a different sales and marketing model. And this means that whether you're a large enterprise or a small SME customer spending $200,000 a year, you get a best in market solution from Flight Centre because we have a dedicated brand for you. And that is really one of the things that enables us to be a winning business. FCM focuses on global scaling consistency, but uniquely offering flexibility.
And in the new FCM platform, we've built in a great proprietary experience, which has its core philosophy of flexibility, which enables our customers who choose to, if they want to use our proprietary end to end experience, can, but they can also work with our key partners, Vic Concur, Citrix, Circa, etcetera. And again, that's based on customer research and feedback. So when we talk about customer growth and retention, a lot of people talk about this and we're very proud that we believe we have the best organic growth model in the industry, Some fantastic new wins, US1.4 billion dollars of annual spend of new wins. You can see some of the brands here, many great brands, including Procter and Gamble, Who we're super proud to be working with now. And we also did a pivot towards government, which I mentioned earlier.
We have we were successful in the Crown Commercial Services bid, example, in the UK, we've already implemented globally in over 160 markets, the foreign combat and development office. And we continue to win more government business in the UK, which I can't mention today, but that will be revealed when we can. And also growth in the French government too. With organic growth, which means we have brands where we have them in some countries, but because we've done a great job, we've extended into further markets. We're also seeing good growth.
And then retention, importantly, you can see some great brands here. It's not just about winning new customers. It's about retaining them and resigning 3 or 5 year contract. Again, a great range of brands where we've done a great job and they've re signed with us in the last year. So really good story around growth and retention.
This is our strategy on the page and it really just sums up very simply why we are winning. Starting with the 2 brands at the top, Corporate Traveler, dedicated and focused on the SME market, as I said before, or SMB, as they call it in the U. S. And SDN, the large market enterprise brand, which is the alternative to the Traditional now big 3. Each of them has their own bespoke brand new products coming to market this year, Mellon in FCM sorry, in Corporate Traveler.
I couldn't be more excited about Mellon. It really is a transformation of what is the best in market in the category of SME, a really great end to end new platform, which offers not just full booking, but also offers all the requirements that an SME Business needs, so data security, traveler tracking, data analytics, duty of care, all in one simple mobile or desktop application. And SDN platform, again, a global platform, which will be launched across the whole world in 100 markets in SDN this year, offering great flexibility as well as a best in class user experience. We didn't have a sales and marketing machine. The reason we And win so much business every year is we have what we believe is the best marketing machine in travel, in corporate travel.
And that really focuses on allowing us to win and retain new customers with a dedicated marketing function for each brand because the sales cycle is completely different in SDN as it is in Corporate Traveler. We didn't have our intelligence layer and this is where all the magic happens. So this is really where we get all the robotics, the artificial intelligence, the data security, the pricing, the analytics and everything that enables us to commercialize our business, really important because this is just how we give a better customer experience to our competitors, but also how we make money. You have our supply layer, which is where we bring in the widest choice of content to our customers. So again, we're a global leader in MDC in the airline space, but also in hotel space as well.
So it means you get the right product to write content to our customers through our products, mobile or desktop whenever they need it. And the final piece is, I think the most important, our culture, our people. This is when I talk to customers, they love our products, they love our Brands, I love that content, but really it's that people and that culture they love. And we've been very clear as part of our grow to win strategy that we need to retain talent around the world throughout COVID, and we've been very careful to make sure our talent stays on board. So just a quick shout out about Proprietary Tech, again, Very proud of both of these platforms, the FGM platform and the Mellon platform and Corporate Traveler, both either live now or going live this year.
Both we believe will be industry changing. We think they're completely differentiated from what's in the marketplace today and we're hearing that from our customers. It's not just our views that we're really Started about what's coming this year. And the final tech slide I'll just show is the FCM platform in China. So uniquely amongst the large global TMCs, we have a completely bespoke offering in China.
So we have as part of our philosophy and flexibility in FCM, a globally consistent platform for customers that has a unique offering in China designed purely for the Chinese market. And we've always had a platform in China, typically is in Chinese, but really is a Western platform adapted. This has been purely built for China within the platform. It's live now with customers, so it's not just an idea, it's with customers today. And it's going to give us an opportunity to grow our market share in China domestically, but also to provide a great local experience for enterprise customers who have an important Chinese program.
So in summary, why we win, we have 2 global category leading brands. FCM is the only alternative to additional 3 TMCs giving a best in class experience and corporate traveler purely focused on SME category where we combine great proprietary tech with a brilliant people service. And that's why we are winning and we believe we'll continue to win going into 2022. So that's it. From corporate, I'll hand over now to Mel to give you an update on leisure.
Thank you, Chris, and good morning to everyone. Well, it's reasonable to say as we sit here in Australia that 2021 was a pretty average year for leisure with Adam already mentioned less than 20% Pre COVID TTV achieved and of course losses during this COVID period as domestic borders here in Australia open and close, open and close and then And then close again and essentially no international travel globally. However, if we look to the future, it was a really pivotal year for leisure with 3 Key factors providing comfort and optimism that we are in a good place to capitalize on pent up demand, which we've already mentioned exists and win again as travel returns whenever that may happen in our various regions. So firstly, we've structurally and permanently changed our cost base in leisure. Secondly, we're fast tracking investment in our technology, new business models and our existing brands.
And thirdly, seeing early evidence to support that we have indeed made the right choices. So to give a little bit more color and detail to each of these three key points. In 2021, we have permanently reduced our cost base and we certainly had a cost issue in leisure pre COVID. In a period of months versus the years that we had initially intended to take. So yes, we do have a smaller network of shops and brands.
However, that was already planned, planned even prior to COVID. However, in our core markets like Australia where we all sit at the moment today, we are still highly accessible and visible to our customers with 95% of customers still within a physical 5 kilometer of one of our locations. We've also retained a smaller but highly experienced and productive network of agents. And just to point something out of core correlation pre COVID to offline performance and success with tenure of our people. And this has gone up by years as a result of the COVID measures that we had to take.
Remembering too that in this new sort of complexity of traveling that we're seeing at the moment and but there is very much more in demand and certainly our experts are seeing that as we speak. And 3, we've also in this year globalized and Streamlined a lot of our core support functions including marketing, financial administration and our previously federated Technology model is now a globalized product management and engineering discipline delivering consistent, scalable capability globally. These major moves were all part of our leisure transformation program and have now been achieved and will ensure our cost return as travel recovers is less than our top line sales, which is very important for leisure in the future. 2021 also saw us positioning for recovery with 3 core areas of investment and effort to set us up to win in the future. We have deployed or are deploying or improving all of our core technology platforms with 2 key outcomes, either improving our online capability or delivering productivity to our offline businesses.
Our 2 proprietary customer and consultant platforms or interfaces SOAR, which is our online world and Healio in our shops have had accelerated development during this period. We've also established The Global Product Design House, which I think I've mentioned before or merchandising center with a global network of product designers and First, bringing irresistible deals to market courtesy of our new Helio platform. Essentially, we designed something once in the region and now we can sell it globally at the touch of the button. We've also invested in the rejuvenation of our KONIC and Markets Leading Flight Centre brand with new captains and co captains and a modernized set of CVPs reflecting a COVID and beyond customer. So as an example, flexibility more than price even now is a core customer need and Flight Centre certainly delivers on that.
We've also created 4 distinct operating models during this period. The mantra is now less brands, more models. So that's I think a very positive change for us. On the next slide is just an imagery of our new modern and highly relevant Flight Centre brand, I believe one of the core assets of this group And customers love this rejuvenated brand according to the ongoing customer insights and analysis that we've made. I'd like particularly to draw our attention or point out our new captain, Tom here in Australia and New Zealand.
Captain Tom is out in full force. It's Philip in South Africa reflecting a much more localized offering and hot off the press and this is actually in the last few minutes, we're about to launch a Female captain, our 1st female captain in Canada. That's of course in combination with all our amazing co captains. So we know our brand now speaks to a wider, younger and desperate to travel customer throughout our global network in a much more relevant and desired Fine. So we're really proud about our new sort of progress with our Flight Centre brand.
Thirdly, we're also optimistic Pleasure. And even though it's hard to travel right now and I know all of you guys sitting in Sydney and Melbourne just must be feeling so frustrated. But when you can, we are certainly seeing early evidence that supports our winning choices and our position. We are achieving increased Customer awareness and consideration for Flight Centre globally. We've seen inquiry surges when borders open and we've seen that just recently in South Africa as it was opened up to a few international markets, the U.
S. As Adam has already mentioned. And even a very small example, when the Cooks opened in New Zealand, we were swamped with Enquirer and just about booked the place out in a few days. And we are winning both new customers and reengaging with our existing customers at high levels. So when travel can happen, our growth is also higher and falls to our newest channels in those that higher growth, which is exactly as per our intention.
So online growth is higher in Flight Centre Brands and our split is now over about 20% of our volume in Flight Centre is coming through our e commerce channel. Premium with our Travel Associates brand and premium products performed very well and earlier, I think reflecting high savings that Adam also mentioned is currently in place. And our new model of our call center, which our Ignite My Holidays acquisition a few years ago is a great exponent of, which switched its offers purely to domestic and cruise was in fact profitable from January this year, albeit the last few closures haven't necessarily helped. In the B2B growth space, we're also looking good with a very strong pipeline to bring on board, reflecting I think not just the customers, but Support of our company too. And we're seeing market share growth, as Adam mentioned, even in suppressed markets like Australia, both on and offline.
And I've got a few slides reflecting this early evidence. You can see the odds market share both online and offline has grown. And note that in the USA, when you go to the next slide, we're already, I think it was the month of June, producing 45% of Pre COVID TTV was circa 16% of the traditional sales force. So excellent results and excellent early indicators. In RSA, as soon as I mentioned those first countries like France opened to the South Africans a few weeks ago, we also saw a huge surge in large international bookings, which remember has been largely missing from our leisure pipeline, both in store and domestically picked up online, which is again exactly what our intentions are for our plans.
Domestic point to point through those commoditized channels like online and the large METI bookings through our experts in store. In the next slide, you can actually see the full 12 of our leisure trading with an ongoing upward trend over the last year, but you can see the impacts of the Australian lockdowns reflecting the size of the Australian business in the leisure part of Flight Centre. Although again, I just want to point out leisure business outside of Australia pre profit achieved nearly $4,000,000,000 in sales And we're seeing some good early movement in those markets. So that's very pleasing. The next slide you have is also a reminder of our key Strategies and leisure, which I'm not going to go on about, but just remind us.
And as I mentioned, we've accelerated these during this COVID period. And as per the early signs I've already mentioned, we'll see us get Back to not just the size we were previously, as Drew mentioned, around that end of the 2024 year and into 2025, but we'll return Flight And leisure travel to a healthy 2% net margin shortly after. So one, that strategy is all about Flight Centre or Liberty in the States, where we intend to blend our multiple channels, bring irresistible deals to market and offer savvy personal service and take what is a 40 year old brand in Australia and a 70 year old brand with Liberty in America from Daggi to Savvy. Our next core FIFO is to become a much Larger premium on luxury travel brands with travel associates and division working with other key luxury operators. And thirdly, taking our place as the home of the travel entrepreneur, where our unrivaled breadth of content, including NDC, as Chris mentioned, Our technology and our culture make us the best choice for either independent agents, agencies or small groups to belong to.
And of course, our small collection of independent yet complementary brands, the bid on the side as I call them, becoming number 1 in their niche categories. Student Universe is well placed to become the market leading global student and youth brands in travel. And My Holidays here in Australia in that Slash holiday category, we have big aspirations to become the number 1 and potentially, hopefully, dislodge less Luxury escapes in that space and of course BYO are leading low cost OTA. So this related yet smaller Folio of brands and models is then underpinned by a globally consistent and customer obsessed set of operations and technology, which you can see on the next slide And it's a little similar to corporate because some of these strategies are shared with corporate where it is useful for both our divisions. Again, for example, The aggregation of our content via our investment in TP Connects, so that we bring NDC content into all our businesses and indeed our B2B businesses as well.
This global leisure core platform is now also enabled us to really start embracing and delivering and using data intelligence, machine learning and AI to further modernize and improve our customer offering and our business outcomes. So very exciting. So just a reminder, our strategy, which is now deployed and you can see this in the next slide, was to rebalance our leisure business across 4 operating models. Our shops will still be critical and a cornerstone, but they are not everything. A world class sales center, I'll add the Ignite My Brands model, but now within other brands will also be important and our independent contractor model and of course e commerce.
You will see a rebalancing across these models and it's already happening. And a reminder that our growth will come from these newer models. Yes, that store network will still provide 50% to 60% of our volumes, but growth will come and is coming from those newer channels. And to pre answer one of the most asked questions I still get 18 months into this COVID crisis, How you ever get back to pre COVID TTV with only half the shops? Well, it is this rebalancing, as I said, that's already happening across these models that enables us to not just get back to that top line number, but more importantly profitably beyond what we were achieving just prior to the COVID crisis.
And finally, just a couple of notes. I wanted to stress that it's also important to note that a lot of our investments not just going into e commerce, we're also busy digitizing I think the entire P2P travel retailing experience across all those operating models. In the next slide, I've got some examples of our Trix platform, which we bought a few years ago as the Umax business based in Toronto is becoming rapidly a digital interface facilitating a collaboration to build a trip And then ongoing communication during that trip for our consultants and their customers. I like to think of this as the Pinterest for travel and I think one of the most exciting things that we're doing. Next, you can see our Hottie portal, our home of the travel entrepreneur, which will be starting to be released before Christmas in the next few months.
And it's a one stop shop that will simplify the lives of our independent agents bringing together all the content and tools in one place. They'll then have access to our leading and widest content as well as the digital technologies like trips that I just mentioned. And we've made some other notable and exciting achievements over the last few months. The Prime Student, Student Universe Partnership, which was just announced a few weeks ago, has been launched, offering students within Amazon further discounts and exclusive deals. Our Jetmax and Google Slacks relationship, which Was launched earlier this year allows both BYO and Aunt Betty to sell in dozens more countries with no physical presence.
These partnerships helping to further our e commerce success and driving I think some great opportunities for our leisure division in the future. So in summary, despite COVID, despite lockdowns in various governments, which you may or may not be pleased with, and I'm sure Screw would love to get into that I'm very optimistic for Leisure at Flight Centre Travel Group. It's not a case of if, it's a case of when. And as I said, the three reasons I'm optimistic and we should be is that we've structurally and fundamentally permanently changed our cost base. We've accelerated investments in technology deals and brand and rebalanced the share of our business across different models.
And as we said, EarlySides has shown positive results for all our leisure businesses globally. So thank you for listening and back to you, Skru.
Yes. Thanks for that, Niall. Yes, just going on to the Slide 45, I think it is. These are the other businesses and in destination we have destination management, business, Hotels, management of hotels and obviously our tour operations, top deck and back roads. Yes.
These are varying, but obviously under this COVID thing, there's a fair bit of that is in hibernation at the moment. But as we say here, The Discover in America is actually doing really well and delivering record profits. So that's great. The Pedal Group, you'll see on the next page is really interesting. They delivered $54,000,000 in profit this year, up from I think about 25 last year before tax.
Admin, which deals with charter business and Flight Centre has a 50% Interest in that, it's famous for private quarantine services for VIPs, for example. You probably know some of the VIPs that they deal with because they've been in the press for getting special advantages in terms of quarantine. And lastly, we have the Travel Junction, which is basically a build bank. So that's one of the areas that we want to grow post COVID significantly. As you said, the Pedal Group went from about sales of about $200,000,000 to $323,000,000 and profit to about, I think it's $54,000,000 They've expanded a bit over a year ago to New Zealand where they now have Six shops and 2 set to open in the next few months.
So that's a really good story and flights in around 47% to 48% of that. So it's really one of our success stories. And although it's a totally different industry, A lot of their business is actually based on the Flight Centre Systems, which is how they develop their business model. Moving on from those other businesses, I was just going to mention with Petal Group That the $54,000,000 profit is important, but one of the other important things is that the staff have about 32 Flight Centre has about 47%, 48% of the shares. And I think the really important thing is the asset value.
Slide 48, we're on now. And if you see Hayden here, for those of you who don't know Hayden, this is him and his last international holiday, which was about 2 years ago as you can see and Hayden's aged considerably since then I can assure you. The next slide is on the outlook and we're targeting the return to profitability, corporate and leisure in this fin year. It requires about 50% of corporate and 40% of leisure of the old of 2019 TDV. And we think corporate will come probably earlier in the second 6 months, leisure later in the 6 months, but obviously it depends a lot On the government, what the government does.
So we're waiting with particularly in Australia because it looks like Most of the Northern Hemisphere governments, it's only going to be improved there. We believe we're very well placed for recovery. We've got a leaner and more efficient business now. We've been delivering some growth over the last 6 months despite all the lockdowns and other things. And we think particularly in the North, that's going to continue over the next 6 months and Australia will and New Zealand will inevitably open Sooner or later, certainly well before Christmas, we believe.
Also, our diversity is really important to us. We've been in 23 countries. We have a corporate division, a leisure division and a supply division. And I think Our suppliers really like the fact that we cover different parts of the market. And so as well as being an advantage to us, We have great relationships with our suppliers on this reason as well.
The next slide, which is 51, I think. The travel industry poised for rapid takeoff. As you can see, A lot of our countries that we're in business with are really starting to get the vaccination programs to pretty high levels. And even Australia, just in the last couple of weeks, it's been rapidly growing. So this is going to happen pretty quickly.
We believe Once most countries get to about 70% of adults and Australia somewhere between that 70% to 80%. Again, there are various routes opening outside Australia and New Zealand, as you know, particularly in Northern Hemisphere. The intra Europe And UK, Europe is quite a lot. Canada and U. S.
To the U. K. Is open. The U. S.
Is not reciprocating yet, But that's going to be a very important one. The transatlantic is really important route. I think it says here 25% of the U. S. Travel TDV is out of the is transatlantic.
So we're just waiting for that to come back. So trading commissions, this is a very important part of our business, working with our suppliers. We have very good relationships with nearly all of our suppliers and we have had for years. As I said before, they like our diversification, not just geographically, But also in our different divisions, our leisure and corporate divisions in particular. And it details here some of the Relationships we have, so that's really important as well as our domestic carriers in Australia.
We have good relations both in the States and in intra Europe, UK and Europe. Next slide is 54. There's some very positive indicators from the consumers. They're confident in terms of once borders open, they're confident enough to travel pretty quickly and you've seen some of the graphs of that. Generally, it's expected they're fairly well cashed up because they haven't been traveling, particularly in traveling.
Some of them haven't been able to move around a lot at all. And obviously, very keen to travel. And I think we have some survey here in the next slide. This is a survey we did here in Australia. It's pretty typical.
And it shows you that about 2 thirds of people that we surveyed, about 1,000 people We want to travel within 6 months. So that's a very good sign for us for travel industry in general. The other thing that's going to be important is the paperwork. As I said, I've just been to the UK for a month and the paperwork is enormous. You need a very good travel agent to look after you.
You need obviously vaccination certificates. You need PCR test certificates. You need permission to leave Australia at the moment. You need permission to come into the UK to make sure you've had the right tests and are vaccinated. So there is going to be more digitalization of this, but over the next 6 to 12 months, People are going to need a lot of help to travel internationally.
So this is very important for us as an intermediary to be able to provide this sort of service. So that's it. Thank you very much. Back to you, Hayden. Thank you.
Thanks, Screw. It might be time now to go for some questions.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin that Q and A session. But I'll go to our first question. It's from the line of Lachlan Costello from Jefferies. So please ask your question, Lachlan.
Good morning, team. Thanks for taking my question. Definitely looks very positive. First one for me is in regards to your liquidity. You've obviously given us your calculation, but just wondering if you could provide any further color to how much headroom there is if lockdown persists in Australia is the New Year and Northern Tennessee markets continue to recover?
Yes, a good question, Loveland. It's Adam here. We've as you say, there was about 9.40 $1,000,000 of liquidity. Now that is after taking account of a full working capital unwind and full Client creditor or client cash unwind as well, neither of which will happen frankly over the last 18 months. Our client cash has not dropped Under $300,000,000 So this is the absolute conservative calculation.
And if you take that 940,000,000
Current
cash outflows, you'll see that it takes us well through into calendar year 2023. So from a liquidity perspective, we're very comfortable with where things are tracking. We've had a good balance we think in terms of our cash control and our cost control To ensure that we've kept a lid on the unnecessary costs, the overhead costs, But we have started to invest particularly in the Q4 in those areas that we think are going to be really important for us as both our leisure And corporate businesses do start to come through and we see people traveling again. So from a liquidity perspective, I'm quite comfortable with where we're traveling at the moment.
All right. Thanks, Adam. And then just secondly, in larger staff retention program, just wondering how successful that has been and if you've managed to hold into high quality talent and obviously given a challenging environment?
Hi, Lachlan, it's Mel. Yes, look, we actually aren't doing too bad on retention. We have an alumni group as well of people that we actually had to stand down during the last year, which we also use when we are needing people. And I think we're getting about half the Take from that group when we do need new people. But now retention is pretty good.
I mean, obviously, earnings are down for some of our frontline staff and we're Certainly trying to help them through that period. But yes, no, we're not losing vast amounts of people or any really huge amounts of people.
Your next question comes from Mark Waid from CLSA.
In light of The Qantas commission cuts that are coming up, I mean, can you just remind us on the relevance of the company to the suppliers and the travelers? I know you've discussed Already screw, but what's has anything changed here fundamentally from your perspective in the past 12 months? Screw, will you address that one initially?
We might have lost a screw there
by the sound of things.
That's all right.
That's okay. Get Mel to respond. So,
Mark, I think you have Mark. So, we've been doing a lot of executive to executive Changes with both our major airline and other supplier partners, cruise lines, tour operators, etcetera. And I think our Relevance is actually increasing because as one group and I sure did mention the diversity, we can give a Airline who is desperate to fill seats where they are allowed to anyway, not into Australia necessarily. We can give them corporate leisure on offline and multiple geographical reach. So if anything, I think we're seeing strengthening in a lot of our particularly some of the international relationships as they poised to recover.
So no, we're not seeing any degradation of our value, if anything, I think it's increasing.
Mark Screw has just texted me to say, but he's now back on the line. Screw, Mark was just asking a question about relevance to Suppliers, if you want to Mel has responded, if you want to make any comments.
Screw. It was more in light of the fact that Qantas are indicating that they want to cut
I would have thought this environment,
I should be begging you guys to work together.
Mark, I actually agree with you 100%.
Mark, you can come and do our negotiations.
Look, I think obviously, Qantas and Air New Zealand have Yes, not monopolies, but not far off in the Australian domestic and New Zealand market within New Zealand. So They can play it reasonably tough here. But as things come back internationally, it's going to be another story. And There's no doubt in my mind that with the Middle Eastern carriers, the Asian carriers, the American carriers, it's going to be very competitive. They're going to want And distribution.
So, yes, I'm pretty confident that although Corner Sandy and New Zealand have taken a reasonably tough stance domestically, They just don't have the same power internationally as things come back. And I think, Yes, obviously, Qantas is important to us in Australia. But if you look at the overseas carriers, for example, British Airways in Europe And North America is quite important and they've taken quite a different take. I think you'd agree, Chris. And certainly the Middle East and generally the Middle Eastern carriers and the Asian carriers as well.
We've found it's generally been pretty positive. But in the end, we've got to deliver the volume. If we can deliver volume, they'll pay for it. There's no doubt in my mind about that, particularly internationally.
So just to be clear, Scott, that's been useful. You haven't seen the other carriers follow suit at this point?
No, generally not. I mean, there was a fair bit of mention by Chris, if you noticed, NDC. But no, definitely not. I mean, And the reasons some of the Middle Eastern carriers obviously still flying fairly regularly into Yes, such as Qatar, the American carriers too, and I think Charlene, who's on the call, would say the same thing about the American carriers, they're being quite Forty, but they're not following Kaunas. As I say, this is really a domestic market for Kaunas at the moment, and that's really what they're thinking about up until the next few months.
And once they start flying internationally a bit, I think we'll see a different A change there. Look, I wouldn't guarantee it, but at least either us as suppliers or distributors Or you as customers, there is plenty of choice. There's going to be plenty of choice.
Yes. No, I agree.
And I'm not sure if
this is for Chris or yourself, Groot. On the recovery in corporate, has anything changed there in your view around the idea of the demand destruction perhaps you would get from the likes of the Zune. I know there's talk of Of a 50% to 70% expected recovery in FY 2022, how does that vary across the big and small corporates? And ultimately, are you still pretty comfortable on where things can go given the small market share you've got?
Chris, do
you Hi, Mark. Yes, just before, Chris, I'll just say that. We do expect 2024 probably not to come back quite The same way, but we and I think Chris will tell you that we've been quite I don't know whether you heard him mention that He's won quite a lot of business this year, but I think from our point of view, we'll come back to our pre COVID Probably quicker than June 24. What do you say, Krish?
Yes. I'm glad for the question actually, because it's half 2 in the morning here and I was really falling asleep. So it's good to get a question, Mark, thank you. No, look, I think there's no doubt some travel will go because of Zoom and Teams. We've been very open about that, particularly internal travel of some customers.
So our view has always been the market won't come back to 100% of 2019. That's for sustainability as well as digital Placement reasons. But we do think it will come back to somewhere around 70% to 80%. And our plan has always been just to win market share of win customers. And actually, we've been quite surprised how rapidly some domestic markets have come back.
If anything, the travel that we thought would disappear would be internal domestic travel. This actually come back stronger than we thought. But we're not planning on it back to 100%, that's never been part of our plan. It's really to win market share and add new customers.
That's clear. Thanks so much guys. Good recovery and all the best for the future.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Tim Plumb from UBS. Please ask your questions, Tim.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes.
Great. I'll just ask two questions if possible, please. Screw, just wondering if talk a little bit about some of the developments Pfizer just approved by the FDA? What sort of impact does that have on the U. S.
Corporate market? And And in particular, employees getting their staff back into the office. Have you had any clients in terms of any discussions with the clients and their views in terms of travel in September?
Tim, we've also got Charlene Lees on the phone. I didn't introduce her at the start, but Charlene is the Head of the Americas. She might want to also comment on that after SCRU Potentially.
Yes. Tim, look, there is a bit of a side of flux at the moment. As you'll know, Vyze has just been Officially recognized in the States, but AstraZeneca isn't at the moment, which is it might be a bit of an issue when the reciprocated travel happens, which hopefully will be Pretty soon. So but Charlene, would you enlarge on the about the Pfizer?
Yes, absolutely, Drew. I would agree. I think those are both very strong indicators and motivators to get people back on the road traveling. And also it's allowing other companies and businesses to mandate the vaccine, which we're seeing more and more of, not only in the travel industry, but in greater industries at large. And that will certainly help get people back into offices, which as we know also has a flow on effect for people traveling and visiting customers And having other customer engagement.
So we anticipate that the recovery is going to continue here through September October, especially in the corporate business because those are very strong Corporate travel month. And we also are seeing a return to school in the USA and across Canada as well. All of the students are going back to school. That will also encourage people to get back into offices and travel. And we're seeing that all of those factors are playing a big part
And the recovery. Great. Thanks. And maybe just one for Chris. I think you guys have said that you're back at 41% of corporate travel as of July, but Screwed also mentioned that there was some government related TTV That's not as profitable.
If we backed out that government related TTV, what sort of percentage would we be looking at in July across the group?
Yes, it's still going to be high 30s.
Got it. Thanks guys.
That relates to that comment relates to one customer in
Okay. Your next question comes from Darshana Naya from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Shashana.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. First off, I think for Chris, Just trying to get a sense of how you're seeing recovery come back for the existing accounts versus the new accounts, especially in Americas and EMEA where you're now tracking at about 1 third of pre COVID level?
Yes, it's a good question. It's really mixed actually, so with existing accounts. So some large corporations still have essential only travel bans in, which means we're seeing below 10% recovery, yes, single digit recovery in those customers, whereas other existing customers have opened up a lot more fully. So it really varies. The good news is that the new customers and who've already been implemented are making an impact on the travel volumes.
And also what we're seeing, Particularly in North America, but also now in South Africa and the UK is a strong bounce back in SMEs and the corporate traveler business. The corporate traveler business tends to be in the past throughout recessions more resilient because SMEs travel really when it is essential to them, whereas large corporations tend to have lots of internal meeting travel. So the SMEs bounce back very strongly, which is really pleasing. So there is a mix of both, but it is very varied across industry segments and also individual customer types.
Yes. All right. Thank you. And just for Mel, regarding online in leisure, can you give us a sense of how this is Tracking in various regions as a part of your mix?
So where we have online presence for Flight Centre brand, which is extensively in every country Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, it's going reasonably well. Canada, of course, has only just started to travel. So that's Probably a lag. So Australia, we were seeing I think the Flight Centre brand getting up towards maybe 29% of overall volume was being achieved through the online channel. We don't have online transacting yet in the UK that will come in by about March.
We're also seeing Student Universe track Well up over this period as well. And Charlene just mentioned the kids go back to school in the next month or 2, so that should see a good impact too. So it's roughly I think about 20% of our overall turnover now is online across our various brands and we are aimed that was previously about sub Hence, beforehand for Flight Centre was as low as 7 and we'd like to get that probably around the 25, 30 mark and the trends are showing us that is where it's going.
Doshana, just to give you a bit more color around that too, pre COVID, we were doing about $1,200,000,000 online in leisure. As Mel said, that was about 7 percent of our leisure TTV. It was fairly evenly among flightcenter.com, most of that coming out of Australia, Student Universe, which is predominantly America, but in a couple of other countries. And then BYO Jet and Aunt Betty combined. They're not doing a lot at the moment because they're international travel focused.
You might have read about the Google Flights deal in the slide. So hopefully some good growth when international resumes for them.
Yes. It's all coming in domestic, but largely through flightcenter.com at the moment and a bit of the same with SU.
Thank you. Very helpful.
Okay. Your next question comes from Wei Wang Chen from JPMorgan. So please ask your question Wei Wang.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So first one, I
was just wondering if you could speak to the impact of these AMZ lockdowns. Just Cognizant that this is fundamentally different, I guess, to prior lockdowns when we had JobKeeper. There's no support this time around. Can you maybe speak to how you're managing this differently?
Wohre, it's Adam here. Yes, there's a couple of things there. We've as you know, when JobKeeper finished At the end of March, we did bring a large number of our stood down staff back on board. And we are And we brought them on board because we know that things will start to open up and we saw that through sort of April, May and certainly the 1st part of June. As you say, the fact that there is no JobKeeper in place at the moment certainly has an impact without The cost base that we have factors that in and if you look at, if you like the more up to date numbers that we have in July, our cost base stayed reasonably similar to June.
So we held that same cost base. We did see a fall in revenue in July through the ANZ region, particularly in Australia as a result of the lockdowns. And that revenue fell by Circa $2,500,000 $3,000,000 compared to what we had in June. Now that was partially offset obviously by the growth that we saw in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the U. S.
But we also lost about $1,000,000 worth of government subsidies on a like for like basis globally. So our outflow increased by about $2,500,000 to $3,000,000 in total through July. So it certainly had an impact on us. In terms of managing how we're managing it though, we do have here with us James Cavanagh, who is our Australian MD. So I might actually just get him to talk through the operational how we're approaching that in terms of managing our people and the approach we're taking there.
Jager? Yes. Thanks, Adam. So across Australia, in the states that are heavily impacted such as New South Wales and Victoria and including the ICT, there is less demand of travel coming through, as you can imagine. So a number of our people have reduced hours voluntarily, which gives a lot of flexibility during this time.
And The thing is that they're getting ready for the travel boom is actually so we can actually rest our people now with some level of reduction in hours And it will set us up for the future as we rebound. People are also taking annual leave and a whole host of other things such as long service leave as well.
Thanks, Jacob.
Yes. Great. Thanks for that. And that was July. And then if we kind of think about you Just bridge from June to July and then if we kind of think about August, obviously, we're still in August, but does the Northern Hemisphere travel kind of more than offset Losses in ANZ now?
Look, we'll wait and see. It's sort of we're certainly still seeing some good growth in Northern Hemisphere. Yes. The unknown we've got there is seasonality, particularly in leisure in the U. S.
So as you know from previous years, Right now, I mean, the U. S. Everyone's on holidays and nobody's booking holidays and that's just the seasonality we have. So there will be a reduction In the leisure revenue in the U. S.
In August, as there always is. The prior period comps are still tracking Sort of largely where they were back in July, but the actual numbers will come off a little bit. We're also just seeing a little bit further drop off as the lockdowns have extended through Australia, with the impact on revenues obviously continued to come off Little bit as well. So my gut feel at the moment would be that we'll probably have a slight reduction in revenue for compared to July. Okay.
All right. Thanks. And then just last one. Just how much And needs to be added to your corporate and leisure cost basis to service the breakeven TTV targets?
So effectively what we've got in there is a fairly consistent, if you like, hibernation cost base is what we have right now. However, we will need to have up to around 25% of new revenue as variable costs. Currently that's tracking at around 15% or 16%. My gut feels that as that starts to build, those variable costs will become more like 25 That will need to be taken into account. Now the other thing with that, Huweng, as well just to bear in mind, If we do see in there for example in leisure in Australia, if we do think see things internationally opening up quicker, We may make a decision to really ramp up marketing to really capture that as things open up.
So that might have a short term impact on them If we decide to invest further in those areas. But as we currently stand, we'd expect around 25% variable cost.
All right. That's all for me. Thank you very much. Thanks,
But your next question comes from Ronald Shea from Morgan Bennett. Please ask your question, John.
Good morning, team. Just a question from me on the revenue margin, obviously, something that you haven't really spoke about. How do you sort of see that evolving As we move through into sort of international travel starting to resume again and across the different divisions, obviously, we can see, obviously, You read a big reduction, but obviously it's within the COVID environment, so it's not necessarily indicative of normal. But Can you just talk me through sort of how you see that moving over the next few years and particularly as you get as we move out of COVID?
Thanks, John. Mel is going to start off and I think Adam is going to also make some comments.
So hi, John. Yes, we've been looking at this a lot in leisure where Remember, we're not so fee based on our revenue as corporate is. So we definitely need some of the international travel happening. What's been interesting is just South Africa has really picked up in the last few weeks by the way just to give on our small TTV in comparison to the group. But in 6 week period where they had only probably about half a dozen international destinations and not their major one of Mauritius open for them, They went from 26% of turnover to 40% of pre COVID turnover in a 6 week period.
And their gross margin improved by 1%, which is largely just the mix of having some international carriage in there. Still doesn't include big, maybe tour bookings etcetera, etcetera. So That's totally in line with what we thought would happen. We think then you should start to and the other thing is our Margin is also still being impacted at the moment by lower SOR levels, because obviously, volumes are very low and we're in sort of more domestic based sales period. So I would expect in leisure to see us recovering to within about 1.5%, maybe 2% of the gross margin we used to achieve before, but that is purely about channel mix overall.
But certainly that South African one gave me I'm confident that our calculations are pretty solid. And that was in a 6 week period. Adam, did you want to talk
at the group level a little? Yes. And I might just get Chris to talk in a minute as well from a corporate perspective. But I think John from an overall perspective, We actually are looking at by channel effectively the revenue margins should return to similar levels to what we've seen previously. And that might be a mix of where that fits in terms of front end commission versus override etcetera.
But From a total return perspective, we would certainly expect that the revenue margin would do that. In leisure, as Mel said, the mix of channel will impact. So if you look at the online transactability increasing to circa 25% that will have maybe a 1.5% to 2% impact on revenue margin, but our cost margin will also be reduced. So I'm less concerned about that impact on the revenue margin. So they're my sort of thoughts.
But Chris, did you have any comments just from a corporate perspective or Northern Hemisphere perspective?
Yes, sure. Yes, it's a good question, John. I think for us, our corporate margin is marginally down slightly down this year because of domestic SKU. I'm actually very confident on margin moving forward, simply because Our margins held up pretty well considering there's very little international travel. But more importantly, what we expect to see is a lot of demand from airlines to fill their premium seats.
So if you look at a simple route like the transatlantic, Virtually all the carriers flying that route make their profitability from premium seats, whether that's 1st business or premium economy. And there's going to be a lot of demand for them to fill that capacity. So because there's a lot of banks, etcetera, who are cutting back, And we are very confident that they will compensate as well for that volume. That's certainly the message we're hearing. So I think as international resumes, I think you'll see our margin increase.
Sure. So just to clarify what you were saying now about that 1.5% below. So you're saying you think leisure will sort of settle at that level? So in other words, at a group level, what you're really saying is, If I'm understanding correctly, corporate kind of goes up and leisure goes down. Is that kind of what you're saying?
I would suggest that a corporate whether they negate each other out, There'll be ups and downs a little bit. Actually 1.2%, but yes, I'm expecting at a leisure blended margin to go down about 1%, 1.5% over the next year Because of the channel mix. Yes.
And for that to extend post lockdown, you mean? Or do you
Yes. Post pandemic?
Yes. Yes. Just purely because we'll be having a much higher proportion of business coming in through that online channel, which by the way is good because we want Shop channel to hold up if not grow because it can do the big media bookings. But yes, purely because of that channel mix. I mean, overall, we'll be selling more in that channel than we ever have, Perhaps even we're actually looking at recovering domestic levels higher than they were ever previously, because we think we'll grow that market share as a result.
Yes. Thanks very much all of you. Appreciate it very much.
Thanks, John.
And your last question comes from the line of Brian Hahn from Morningstar. Sir, please ask your questions, Brian.
Chris, I think you said that more SME companies are outsourcing their travel management to people such as yourselves. I'm wondering whether or why that outsourcing trend has been limited to the SME space during this time?
Yes, it's
a good question. It's because large companies have always used TMC to manage their travel. So large companies would never try and do it themselves. It's too complicated, Whereas SMEs, some SMEs typically allowed staff just to go online and book it themselves. Or if they had a Travel provider like corporate traveler, they often didn't enforce it.
They would say this is our preferred travel provider, but actually you can go and book it yourself as well. So the real change in behavior is in SME. However, you make a good point, even in a large market in SCN, There were companies who turned a blind eye to what we called leakage, allowing their staff to book out a policy. And that's certainly Could be clamped down on, but we think the biggest impact will be in SME.
While I have you there, Chris, just a minor clarification. On Slide 8, it says corporate is currently at 41% of pre COVID, But on Slide 17, it says 47%. Is 47% the right number right now?
No. Can we clarify, I
haven't got the size in front. That's the same.
Yes, I think from memory, Brian, that's transactions for 47th Livanta tickets whereas the TTV is the 41.
Yes. So Brian, Slide 8 talks to TTV as the volume and that's where we're sitting for corporate sitting at 41%. As Hoda said, what we've got in Slide 17 is the ticket volumes. So what that says is that we are getting back to nearly 50% of our ticket volumes for the bookings that we're putting through Because they're mainly domestic, they're lower value and therefore the TTV that we're tracking at is lower at 41%.
Got you. And lastly, Mel, on the rationalization of the physical retail network, Is that now largely complete? And is it at all conceivable that you will open new stores When pent up demand gets released in a big way?
So, Brian, yes, it's complete, but we still have a group of stores In hibernation here in Australia, I think it's about 50 or 60 still from memory, which we intend to reopen. So they're Basically just sitting there and I think it's about 30 that we actually will exit at some point. So we've made all the deals. We know what we're doing, but there's about 60 stores Australia that will start trading at some point. Your other question then about whether we'll look for new stores, Not necessarily, but it wouldn't be something that we would discount.
We may probably do more 1 in, 1 out kind of But yes, there was great stores, we would absolutely. And I know, for example, again, just use South Africa, we exited a major mall there called the Mall of Africa because that rent was just ridiculous. And anyway, we're just going back in now. So it's a new store. We're closing a small one down the road and we've got about 50% less rent and was previously offered and with 6 stores down from where there was Penn Travel who no longer are there.
So we've got an excellent location. So you probably see us doing more of that. We probably trade out into better sites. So I think I may have mentioned a few times last year, one of the things we're not I think that South African example is a good one of getting sites if we ever want any more. But J.
K, do you want to comment on any in Australia?
No, probably just to add about the proximity. So where we have closed stores is that we are within that 5 ks reach still within about 95%, 97% of our customers So the geographical reach is still there to connect with customers.
And finally, Brian, one thing again, we probably see the Contact center or the call center is a way that we can increase our consultant pool without necessarily having to increase the shop pool. So we see that that call center model, which we're just getting up in the Flight Centre brand, would be a way that we can expand. We might in the luxury in TiVo very well bring on new locations. That's certainly one because it's a much more boutique model. But again, there is no major intent to increase the geographical spread because as J.
K. Mentioned, we've got reach, we just attack density.
Thanks, Mel. I look forward to booking with you guys soon.
We do too. Thank you, Brian.
Thanks, Brian.
We've normally come out with some review deals for you guys, but we figure that might have been a little bit harsh thing as you're all in lockdown. But as soon as you are in lockdown, We've got some special deals just for you guys.
We can do a mystery flight, but the mystery is when you can actually use it. Guys, it looks like that might be the last of the questions. Obviously, we're around in and out of meetings most of the day. So if you do have anything else that you want to talk to us about, just let me know and we'll have chat later. Thanks all the Flight Centre guys too, including Chris, who is up at a very late
hour. Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.