Flight Centre Travel Group appoints new global CMO
Australian travel agency, Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) has appointed a new global chief marketing officer, Darren ‘Daz’ Wright.
An internal move, Wright will be responsible for the leisure division, including the global Flight Centre brand and Travel Associates, taking over what is a newly created role.
Darren ‘Daz’ Wright
Based out of the company’s Brisbane head office, Wright will have global responsibility for the overall brand strategy, customer insights and engagement, marketing operations and technology, and worldwide retail.
He will be reporting directly to FCTG global leisure CEO, Melanie Waters-Ryan, who is also based in Brisbane. He moves across from the role of global CMO of the group’s retail brands, and all global marketing leaders will report in to Wright.
Wright said he is excited to ramp up the core global business systems design.
“The road ahead is to further re-invigorate the Flight Centre brand when speaking to our existing customers, as well as engage a new younger audience looking for security and advice from our collective travel experience.”
Wright also hinted as some potential future changes within Flight Centre’s roster of agencies, which currently includes Rapid Media, We are Flip (creative) and PR agency Pepr Agency.
“As we continue FCTG’s globalisation, we are focused on building scalable capabilities with core agency support from long-term partners such as Rapid Media in Australia. We will be looking at new agency agreements globally supporting smaller more agile in-house teams to drive success.”
Waters-Ryan said: “The past 18 months have been a tough time for our leisure brands, but we have used this time to reinvent ourselves and gear up for a bright future.”
“We are moving our brands to a new level of engagement and want to ensure a global approach delivers irresistible deals for our clients from a brand that is savvy online and offline, in a mass retail or premium leisure context. Daz’s ability to deliver marketing and brand strategies that engage our customers will be key to making our brands stick.”
Wright joined Flight Centre in 1996 as marketing leader for the Australian Flight Centre and Great Holiday Escape brands, leaving in 2001 to then work at brands including Virgin Blue, AirAsia and Scoot Airlines (part of Singapore Airlines Group). He re-joined FCTG in 2014 as marketing leader for the group’s Australian leisure brands.
The pandemic has proven to cause difficulty for travel brands such as Flight Centre, with border closures grounding a number of airlines’ fleets. Flight Centre took out a full page ad in The Australian, marking 12 months since the national border closed.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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