Flight Centre Travel Group hires Rooster PR

Rooster PR has been handed a retained UK press office brief by the Flight Centre Travel Group, following a competitive pitch. The agency will focus on positioning Flight Centre as the UK’s top travel retailer to Australia.

Rooster PR will be responsible for Flight Centre’s day-to-day press office and ongoing media strategy, managing media enquiries, as well as news generation and crisis and issues management.

Under the agreement the agency will manage PR activity for the following brands:

• Flights and tailor-made holiday specialist Flight Centre UK and Flight Centre Ireland
• Flight Centre First & Business
• Flight Centre Business Travel
• Round the World Experts
• StudentUniverse (a resource for student travel discounts)

Rooster will kick off 2017 activity by implementing an integrated Australia Day (26 January) campaign which the agency created for the pitch. The campaign will communicate the benefits of booking with Flight Centre, highlight the company’s knowledge of Australia, and incentivise potential customers to book their Australian holidays with Flight Centre.

In addition to Flight Centre, Rooster will be responsible for StudentUniverse’s UK press office. Briefed to elevate the company’s profile and position it as a world leading travel booking site for students and youth, Rooster will manage all media enquiries as well as news hijacking, data mining and content generation.

The appointment comes following the release of Flight Centre’s first advert, which showcases real Flight Centre travel consultants. The company put a five-figure media spend behind the programmatic advert, which received over 250,000 impressions in the first week.

Sue Johnson, head of retail marketing at Flight Centre UK & Ireland, said: “We were impressed by Rooster’s expertise and the creative ideas they presented in response to our brief. We’re looking forward to what we can achieve through this partnership in 2017, particularly the exciting Australia Day campaign this January – watch this space.”

James Brooke, MD at Rooster, added: “Following a successful 2016, being appointed by one of the world’s largest travel companies is a cracking start to the new year. We’re eager to put our plans into action and position Flight Centre asthe number one travel retailer to Australia for media and consumers, not just this Australia Day but throughout 2017 and beyond.”