Flight Centre restarts international travel sales

Eager travellers can look forward to skiing in Japan, a Fijian sunset or a drive across New Zealand with a major tourism company restarting global sales.

Skiing in New Zealand or a sunset in Fiji could be on the cards this year with Flight Centre launching its first international holiday sale since the COVID-19 pandemic started.

Despite interstate border wars threatening to derail the nation’s recovery, Australia’s largest travel retailer this week restarted its global travel sale one week after Qantas revealed it would fly overseas from July.

Flight Centre has launched deals to Hawaii, New Zealand, Singapore Japan and Fiji as well as cruises.

A New Zealand road trip starts at $899, skiing in Japan from $1819 and a luxury escape to Fiji $999.

Flight Centre managing director Graham Turner. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

Travel boss Graham Turner said the fate of international travel relied on the government allowing people to go overseas and removing the requirement to quarantine upon return.

“There’s still a fair way to go and it could change but with the vaccination program that will be underway in a couple of weeks we’re pretty confident in July or August limited international travel will be available,” he said.

“I think we’ll see more bookings for later on in the year.”

Flight Centre and Qantas’ plan to travel overseas by July may have been dealt a blow this week with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk calling for changes into how overseas arrivals are processed.

Ms Palaszczuk’s comments come following several cases of the highly contagious UK strain being discovered in hotel quarantine, and possibly in the community.

New Zealand’s ski fields are in Aussie travellers’ grasp.

Qantas has signalled its confidence in the return of international travel following the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, last week reopening bookings across its entire overseas network from July 1.

Sales of tickets for flights to the US and London have been brought forward for departures from July 1, after the national carrier had previously removed these flagship routes from its flight schedule until at least October 2021.

Flights to London, Los Angeles and Dallas will be operated by the airline’s Boeing 787-9 fleet.

However plans to restart flights to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan from March 29 have now been abandoned, with tickets on those sectors now only available for travel from July 1.

“We continue to review and update our international schedule in response to the developing COVID-19 situation,” the airline said in a statement on Tuesday.