21 July 2017
Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) South Africa will extend its 30% black women employee shareholder ownership trust for its newly created corporate travel entity, FCTG Corporate Pty Ltd.
FCTG Corporate Pty Ltd. will comprise of three corporate brands namely Corporate Traveller, Flight Centre Business Travel and Stage and Screen.
Kevin Backhouse, Chief Financial Officer FCTG, explains the rationale behind the restructure: “Our corporate businesses faced completely different challenges to that of the retail environment. It simply made business sense to separate the two parts of the company based on the different risks and challenges.”
FCTG Corporate Pty Ltd is furthermore demonstrating its commitment to B-BBEE and transformation by creating a 30% black women employee shareholder ownership trust, which will benefit over 200 of the travel company’s black female employees.
Rather than having one beneficiary, FCTG MD Andrew Stark explains FCTG wants to drive transformation and empower a large number of people in the company. “As visionaries in the travel industry, we want to truly live up to the idea of broad-based black economic empowerment.”
“Although FCTG South Africa forms part of a multinational company, we have been operating in South Africa for 23 years. We are firmly committed to South Africa and we embrace transformation, which is why we want our employees to be beneficiaries in the shareholding of the company,” adds Kevin.
FCTG Corporate Team Leader and beneficiary of the trust, Samantha Billings explains the opportunities created by the newly created ownership trust are endless. She says: “For me the opportunity to represent the black women of the company is an honour and a privilege. Not only do I have the opportunity to grow within the company, I can also inspire others to be better and dream bigger.”
Billings describes her colleagues as dynamic, successful, energetic, determined and persistent. She says: “I feel so privileged to work with these amazing people and am grateful for the opportunity I was given to grow into a leadership role in a short period of time. I love that I am able to make a difference in the business and to be rewarded for my contribution. FCTG truly is a career and not a job.”
Flight Centre Travel Group South Africa last year achieved an annual turnover of over R5.4-billion in sales, changing its name to FCTG to reflect the growth and extent of its diversified brands across the three pillars of leisure, corporate, and wholesale.