Flight Centre Travel Group during the past year has
completed two major technology investments that chief experience officer John
Morhous said positions the travel management company to work better across
clients' range of booking tools and be better prepared for providing New
Distribution Capability content.
Just before the end of 2021, Flight Centre fully acquired
Texas-based software company Shep, whose browser extension tools include the capability
to capture travel bookings made outside of preferred platforms and partners. It
since has been fully integrated as an FCM extension, enabling clients to modify
third-party websites and "bring some of our platform consistency" to
clients who need multiple booking solutions, Morhous said. The Shep team also
has doubled in size since the acquisition.
The acquisition grew from an initial commercial relationship
with Shep, which evolved to a minority investment and then the full
acquisition. That is an example of the "innovation incubation
process" Flight Centre like to employ, working with early-stage startups to
see how they fit in with the TMCs own product vision.
"That's the overall strategy that we do," Morhous
said. "All the major investments that we've done all go through a similar
process. We're not like a corporate VC that goes out and puts money in a bunch
of places. We're very strategic with the direction that we go, with the stuff
we're working on."
In March, the group also boosted its minority stake in
TPConnects—a Dubai-based tech company that makes travel content from a variety
of sources, including NDC aggregators, available via a universal API—to a 70
percent stake. The investment puts Flight Centre in a "unique
position" for a future in which NDC can put personalized offers in front
of customers, Morhous said. Instead of having "half the team working on
travel experience and half the team working on content aggregation and
acquisition," the majority stake gives Flight Centre a team that can focus
on the content side, leaving Flight Centre's teams free to focus on user
experience, he said.
Flight Centre plans to continue its investment and
incubation strategy, with fintech, sustainability and internal technology tools
for consultants all key areas of focus, Morhous said.
"You see all the innovation happening
across the board, and if you don't have a process around how you look at that,
evaluate it and see where the matches are within your business and see that
through, you're just floundering," he said. "It takes a lot of work,
but we've seen a lot of positive results."