Flight Centre boss Graham “Skroo” Turner has decamped to London for a month of meetings as the company focuses on its offshore operations roaring back thanks to high vaccination rates, while Australia languishes in a low-vaccine-rollout Sydney-lockdown slump.
“The northern hemisphere – the United Kingdom, a couple of countries in Europe and the United States primarily – are by far our best performers over the past six months in terms of winning big corporate accounts,” Mr Turner said from London, where he’s been based since earlier this month and will remain well into August.
“Life is virtually back to normal in London. People are out and about and very few people are wearing masks in the streets, even though they were still clocking around 50,000 new cases a day just last week. That figure has now halved, generating more confidence.”
By contrast, it was “hard to tell” what would happen by way of economic recovery in Australia, he said, adding, “we could be locking down for the next six months. The past year has shown you can’t predict the road out governments will take, other than it will likely involve more border closures and lockdowns.”