Flight Centre Travel Group Reviews

Cons

Low base but there is every opportunity to make decent money

Cons

can be slow enquiries sometimes

Cons

Long hours
Hard work
not much progression
manager had favourites
Pay

Cons

I dont agree with their approach to Fast Tracking people, this is based on where you went to university, not your actual ability or potential. Also, working in Product Support/Infinity was one of the worst experiences. The head of Product and Air constantly cut our wages and changed our targets every 3 months blaming things like Brexit. Basically they were capping our wages constantly. Also hiring non experienced people and the workload falling back on us. Stay away from Product, especially Air. You are treated like dirt and spoken to like a child.

Cons

As I was leaving, the pay wasn't that great (due to being slow for our store) and I was not happy with the new pricebeat policy that came into place, as I felt I was doing lots of pricebeats every month, I was now getting penalised for it. The pay can be tough, the hours are long and customers can get demanding. As long as you're good at time management, you will be fine!

Cons

Although I always felt I earned a reasonable wage (I qualified for global so I was certainly at the top of my game for a while) the goal posts for targets were constantly moved. Whenever we started to do too well and make a decent profit, suddenly everything would change and that would all be wiped out. The final straw of this was having to take almost a £20k paycut and being fobbed off with excuses.

As a team leader, I felt very responsible for the people in my team (this was not always the case, certainly in retail where some TLs would sell their own mother to make profit). When they were not hitting their targets and the commission structure was changed, they were barely making enough to cover rent, this is just totally unacceptable and cruel.

It can be a little cult like.

The boozing culture is crazy. As much as I loved it at certain times, being fed free booze on a regular basis at buzz nights its not great. I believe they have actually done away with buzz nights now.

Once you get to a certain level, if you are not 'in the club' then you will get no further. There are certain people who will always get promoted, regardless of managerial talent, because they have been on the fast track program. There is also a crew of people at the top who are all mates and will pull strings for each other and no one else. To the point where there are people in high roles that they are woefully underqualified for but they have the right friends.

Cons

Lots of work at times, not helped by long winded systems and lots of paperwork. IT is slow and unrelaible. If you are in leisure lots of WEEKENDS! Even though it is arguably very quiet in lots of shops and not a lot of business to be done. Long hours (9 hour days, plus staying late for any urgent task etc, and there are a lot), not much chance for flexible work or working from home. “Enforced” fun in form of Buzz Nights, not everyone wants to get drunk on a Wednesday night. Some internal politics. And sometimes a bit “childlish”/“school like” (silly meetings, quizes, gimmicks... not for everyone)

Cons

Hard to earn commision as it is depending on flight prices and account managers

Cons

Too many social things for me.

Cons

Firstly - I'm going to be mostly negative but I should say first and foremost that the company is not all bad, in 18 months there I worked as a Travel Consultant and then Assistant Team Leader. I attended numerous social events, made good friends and did go on an all expenses trip abroad (I was lucky and unusual in this respect). However I've been spurred into writing this by the bad publicity the company has had over the last week or so over in Australia and its response to said publicity. Even though the current bad press is in relation to the Aus rather than UK side (though the UK has had its fair share in the past as well) - the general negative sentiments from past consultants are in my view, warranted.

I would say the company suffers from high turnover because a lot of people turn up thinking the job will be about travel. It is not. This is a typical sales job, travel is simply the "product" and is treated as such. I would agree with the review below that the pressures of the job can affect your mental health and that there are environments that can be described as bullying. This is not unique to Flight Centre but is typical of most sales environments where people are under pressure. As I mentioned above, the Flight Centre management make an active effort to keep people happy (buzz nights, famil trips ect) but ultimately they are also responsible for an environment in which people are under pressure to hit targets (fine this is typical sales) but to do so with often questionable tactics of inflating prices and taking advantage of ill informed clients.

The workload is overwhelming, speaking from personal experience (though I was far from unique) I was often doing 1-2 hours of overtime per day. Others who I trained with were much the same. What I ended up with was a working week of roughly 60 hours, not the worst I've come across but not great either.

I'm still in touch with the eight people I trained with, two years down the line only two of them are still at FC but I would say that these were the two that from the start knew and embraced the fact they were taking on a sales role - in fact I think they were both from a previous sales environment. FC like to market themselves as a fun place to work (you'll find them constantly referencing that they appear in the top 100 places to work - this is because signing that survey is pretty much shoved down your throat by repeated management emails), I can say categorically that in my experience and the vast majority of people I knew, it is not an enjoyable job. It is however punctuated with the odd fun thing that keeps you there that little bit longer...