Flight Centre adapts with automation to deliver amazing customer experiences

Flight Centre’s mission is to “open up the world for those who want to see.” This mission has taken it from its humble beginnings with two Australians offering bus tours around Europe, to an international travel company with over 3,500 travel experts and 450 stores.

Central to Flight Centre’s mission is a commitment to delivering amazing experiences for customers, employees, and partners. In an industry defined by constant change, this requires the ability to adapt to customer needs and respond to unexpected disruptions.

Adapting at the speed of change

In recent years, Flight Centre has had to navigate the impacts of government restrictions on travel, cancellations of routes, and even the closure of airlines. Its ability to adapt was tested when it was tasked with processing 105,000 flight credits into refunds within just three weeks during a peak period.

Flight Centre had less than a week to get started, and the scale of the task was significant. If done manually, processing this volume of refunds would have required onboarding 80 employees to work daily—including public holidays—over the three-week period.

The logistical hurdles made a manual approach unfeasible, so Flight Centre reached out to UiPath for an alternative. The existing partnership between the two companies and the agility of teams on both sides enabled UiPath to have robots operational within a day to process the refunds.

Working 24/7, the robots were able to process the last refund just ahead of the deadline. What’s more, Flight Centre spent less than 10% of the estimated half-million dollars it could have incurred recruiting, onboarding, and training a temporary workforce.

Within 24 hours of contacting UiPath, we had stood up the equivalent of an 80-person workforce which was able to work around the clock processing refunds error-free.

Roel Wijmans · Automation Team Leader at Flight Centre

Unlocking employee potential to deliver amazing experiences

The refunds project is one of many projects Roel Wijmans, Automation Team Leader at Flight Centre, has delivered using UiPath automation. One of the first projects enhanced Flight Centre’s booking process to connect travelers to their airport transfers on time, even when their flight was delayed.

Another project automated the loading of new products into Flight Centre's booking system, reducing manual workload by 30% and enabling employees to spend more time on quality assurance.

With UiPath automation, Flight Centre continues to streamline its business with a focus on empowering employees to focus on high-value work.

Automation is giving our people back time to be experts, to focus on adding value where it's most important, and to support delivering amazing travel experiences.

Stacey Seeto · General Manager, Supply Operations at Flight Centre Travel Group