The Flight Centre Travel Group (FTL) has unveiled a new share-based retention scheme, called the Global Recovery Rights program, which has been designed to benefit the company’s global sales force and support staff.

Under the new Global Recovery Rights program (GPR), staff across the globe (excluding board members and senior executives) will be granted share rights if they continue their careers with the company through to December 31^st 2022. The scheme comes as a response to COVID-19 and its ongoing impacts on the company’s people.

Most participants will receive a one-off GRR grant of 250 share rights, which will vest in February 2023, when the company will release its December 2022 half-yearly results. GRR participants who meet the program’s continuous employment condition will then be able to exercise their rights and receive an equivalent number of ordinary FLT shares.

In total, about 7,500 FLT people across all Flight Centre Travel Group brands, including FCM Travel, are expected to receive about 1.9million shares under the program at an expected non-cash cost of circa 30million Australian dollars, based on today’s share price (dated 25^th June 2021).

Managing Director Graham Turner said the GPR program was designed with the key strategic objectives, including:

• Investing in and retaining people who would be integral to the company’s recovery post COVID-19
• Shareholder value creation
• Preserving cash, while governments continue to impose heavy travel restrictions that were severely impacting demand for travel

Graham Turner said: 

“The GPR program underlines our people’s importance and recognizes their efforts and loyalty since the pandemic began and heavy travel restrictions were imposed, adversely impacting their earning potential while they continued to work incredibly hard to help our customers secure refunds or rearrange their travel plans.

“It is first and foremost a retention program that encourages our people to continue their careers with us during what we believe will be an important 18-month period as vaccination programs progress, trading conditions start to normalize and the recovery starts to gain momentum.

“In addition to being aligned with our strategic objectives, this new program also gives our people a stronger degree of ownership of our company and thereby strengths the ties between their interests and those of our other shareholders in the mid-long term.”

* This statement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer under the GRR program. No person is entitled to receive an offer under the GRR program as a result of this statement. Any offer to be made by FLT under the GRR program will be made to eligible employees through formal offer documentation tailored for each relevant jurisdiction.