Graham Turner’s harsh prediction about ‘failed Covid experiment’
Flight Centre CEO Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner has not been shy about voicing his opinion on how the state and federal governments have handled Covid-19. Now he has this prediction about international travel.
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It takes more than losing a cool $20bn to stress out Graham Turner.
Notoriously unflappable, the boss and co-founder of international travel behemoth Flight Centre has been in business for almost 50 years. And he has seen some things.
In his early days as a qualified veterinarian turned businessman, Turner, better known by his childhood nickname “Skroo”, juggled finances with his first travel venture, a double decker bus tour business called Top Deck Travel, and scraped by in those early years by the skin of his teeth.
He has been woken by 3am phone calls to deal with nightmarish logistics of finding a new engine for a broken down tour bus stuck between Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.
He has dealt with several serious accidents involving his buses in the late 1970s and early 1980s including a rollover on an icy road in Russia in which a female passenger died.
Over the decades, Turner, 72, has weathered recessions, pilots’ disputes, online competition, the first Gulf War and Australia’s now disbanded Travel Compensation Fund (TCF) that resulted in him and fellow Flight Centre co-founders Geoff Harris and Bill James putting their houses up as guarantees. Then there’s the September 11 US terror attacks and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Turner knows stress. He can handle stress. But the Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly tested his mettle.
Travel and tourism, particularly affected by an almost overnight worldwide shutdown, saw 80 per cent of Flight Centre’s multi-billion dollar sales gutted – from $A24bn in 2019 to $4bn in 2021. He was forced to lose 13,500 staff and, in Australia alone, Flight Centre shopfronts more than halved from about 950 to 430. In the space of about three months, the company’s monthly spend was dramatically culled from $230m to about $65m. His personal shares in the company fell in value from $732m at the end of 2019 to $154m in April 2020.
It was “significant”, Turner says, though “not the end of the world”.
And while he is saddened to lose so many staff, Turner is not easily agitated.
“We’ve had a lot of stressful situations over the years,’’ he says.
“During that first decade or so of Top Deck – and we started Flight Centre in 1982 – rarely did we have a lot of money.
“We were using profit from previous trips to buy more buses and that sort of thing. We scraped through but it taught us the importance of cash and cash flow in business.
“We’ve done pretty well as a business over the years and we’ll see this pandemic through too. We’re pretty confident about that. There’s no use getting stressed about it.
“In the end, business itself is not life and death. You learn that over time – to try to keep things in perspective.’’
Turner has not been shy about voicing his opinion about how Australia’s federal and state governments have handled Covid-19, though it is uncharacteristic, he says, for him to lend his voice to the chorus of public opinion on any topic.
But there is, he says, too much at stake. And so using his clout in the travel industry, Turner, who obviously has a vested interest in seeing borders open, has had some things to say.
He believes that in years to come, we will look back on widespread lockdowns, prolonged periods of isolation, closed state borders, business collapse, mental health anguish and governments “scaring the shit out of everyone” with a disapproving “tsk” and a shake of our heads. Next time, we will do it differently. Turner believes the “experiment” has failed and this will all be marked in the annals of history as the way not to handle a global pandemic.
“This is the first time ever in the world where we’ve had lockdowns. It was an experiment that they (governments) will probably discard in future pandemics,” he says. “If you look at the costs and benefits of widespread lockdowns, they will never be used again in western democracies. Almost certainly, people will realise it was a mistake. In most countries in the world there was the worst of both worlds – the lockdowns weren’t effective in eliminating the virus and the disruption was enormous.
“I don’t think they’ll be used again except perhaps in totalitarian countries who can do lockdowns in a much more severe way.”
Of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s “keeping Queenslanders safe” catchcry, Turner, who was in the UK mid-year, says: “I’m certainly sick of hearing that. Definitely, the borders should be open now.
“We have been treated like errant children. A lot of the government restrictions were over the top,” he says.
“The big issue I have with the government, their basic strategy was trying to scare the shit out of everyone, so that people genuinely thought they were going to die.
“For healthy people under 70, the mortality rate is so low. I think the government did that deliberately to scare people into doing what they wanted them to do. And I’d love to be a fly on the wall of national cabinet meetings. They would have to be the most dysfunctional meetings.”
Turner was himself vaccinated in March and has little sympathy for those who have had the opportunity for a Covid vaccination but have not yet been jabbed.
It’s time, he says, for those people who are choosing not to be vaccinated to “take the consequences”.
He is not planning mandatory vaccinations for Flight Centre staff but any employee who doesn’t have it will not be able to be in contact with customers or other workers.
“If people have had the opportunity to be vaccinated and they haven’t done that, then one presumes they don’t want to be vaccinated,” he says.
“You can’t hold up the whole state. It (opening the borders) will probably put some strain on the health system but unless you hold people down and vaccinate them forcibly I’m not sure what more you can do. You can mandate it but people won’t necessarily do it.
“We were in the UK in July-August and we went to Dubrovnik (Croatia) for a long weekend … nothing has changed. There’s a lot more paperwork and we had quite a few tests but everything works normally.
“There was a lot of infection in the UK when I was there but people were just going about their normal lives.”
Turner was raised in Stanthorpe, the middlechild between two sisters – Robyn, 74, and Julie, 64 – to apple orchardist parents Frank and Iris.
During WWII, his father was in the air force, while his mother previously owned and ran the Cleveland Hospital. The hospital was sold in 1947 and they moved to Stanthorpe to get into the apple business. It was a family affair and Turner was put to work “from a pretty early age” picking and packing apples.
He attended boarding school at Toowoomba Grammar, then studied veterinary science at The University of Queensland, graduating in 1971.
He worked in western Victoria until mid 1972, when he travelled to the Munich Olympics in Germany.
Turner then worked as a locum vet in the UK and it was on a job to see a horse near Leeds, in the northern English county of Yorkshire, that Turner first saw the old London double decker bus that would begin it all.
It was just before Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, and he convinced fellow vet and his former high school friend Geoff Lomas to go halves in the £700 price tag to buy the bus.
“We called in to see a horse and there was an old wartime aerodrome with all these buses,” Turner says. “Initially the idea was to get a group of friends and share costs and drive around Europe.
“But you know what friends are like and people dropped out and changed their mind. We started advertising for tours at £100 for six weeks to Spain, Portugal, Morocco. We ran the first one in November 1973. By the time we got back we had another load of passengers waiting for us.
“One of our passengers, Bill James, bought a second bus … we just kept buying more buses because they were so cheap.”
As co-founders, Turner, Lomas and James originally called their business Argas Persicus Travel, after a poultry tick, in a nod to “vet humour”. By 1975 it was renamed Top Deck Travel and by the late 1970s, there were about 70 old double decker buses roaming “all over the world”.
By the early 1980s, Turner returned to Australia as Top Deck travel director and founded Flight Centre in 1982 with James and Geoff Harris (James and Harris have both since relinquished their executive roles and board membership).
Top Deck was sold in 1986 (Turner bought back into it as part of a consortium in 2003 and then Flight Centre bought out the consortium in 2015).
In November 1995, Flight Centre was the first travel agency group to be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
It was synonymous with its “lowest airfare guaranteed” advertising slogan and its trademark airline “captains” standing outside every store. (There are only 10 captains left now, being a favourite item for many people to “borrow” and display in private homes.)
Pre-Covid, Flight Centre was one of the world’s largest travel groups.
Jude Turner has been there since the beginning of it all. Jude, 68, first met her future husband when she was 18 but was scared off on going out on a date when her friends told her his nickname was “Skroo” (it is actually a nickname bestowed upon him at school from a Turner brand of screwdriver).
But some years later, when the then Jude Stent was a more worldly 22, she coincidentally crossed paths with Turner at his London Top Deck office.
She began working for him but, as the story goes, after two weeks Turner told her he couldn’t afford to pay her and offered her a travel trip instead.
She took up the offer and, whether by accident or design, Turner himself ended up driving the bus. By the end of the trip they were a couple and they married in a no-fuss affair in December 1976 in Jude’s mother’s backyard in Beachmere, north of Brisbane.
Their 45-year marriage has produced two children – Matt, 40, and Jo, 37, who also run successful businesses.
Matt’s 99 Bikes (of which Flight Centre has a 47 per cent stake) was one of the few businesses that did exceptionally well in Covid, with profit soaring from $18m to $54m in a year. London-based Jo owns activewear brand LNDR.
Jude has blossomed with her own business career, as founder of Spicers Retreats, after being “fired” from Flight Centre in 1995 after working in various company roles (“in fact almost every job in Top Deck and Flight Centre”) including receptionist, doing the books, interviewing new consultants, even sewing curtains.
“It became obvious to me that I wasn’t wanted there,” Jude says.
“It was actually a tough time for me because I thought it was a family business. I’d done years for Top Deck and Flight Centre and even though I’d had a couple of kids I’d always worked a bit.
“It caused tension from me … I don’t think Skroo noticed. But that’s life, it moves on and you’ve got to roll with it. And it was better for me, in the end, to be out of there.”
Jude turned her attention to building a family holiday retreat on land near Cunningham’s Gap but she soon realised her workaholic husband was unlikely to ever get there (“he doesn’t really do relaxing”).
The same year, they also purchased almost 5000ha of farming land at Grandchester, west of Brisbane, with a small bed and breakfast on site.
This became Spicers Hidden Vale, the first in the luxury Spicers portfolio, followed by Spicers Peak Lodge in 2004. Spicers has now expanded to nine properties in Queensland and NSW with a 10th coming on board in NSW’s Hunter Valley mid next year.
She has also branched into the luxury walking market with the Scenic Rim Trail in South East Queensland.
A new venture coming soon is called Private Collection by Spicers, where private holiday homes in “iconic locations” can be booked, including the Turner’s own properties at Noosa and Belongil Beach at Byron Bay.
The Turners have also invested in environmental and conservation efforts, with Spicers Hidden Vale Retreat the location of an $18m, 3100ha wildlife and conservation refuge, in collaboration with The University of Queensland.
Spicers has done very well during the pandemic, increasing from about 65 per cent occupancy pre-Covid to about 90-95 per cent now.
“I hope it’s been some support for poor Skroo having the other family businesses doing well in this time,” Jude says.
“I think, for his business, this has been the hardest time in the 45 years I’ve been with him. Any other difficult things like wars or other problems that travel has had before, it’s been easier to control the outcome. This one has been very difficult.
“But no one who knows him has any doubt he will build it up again. Of course it will be different but, don’t worry, Flight Centre will be back in full swing as soon as they can.”
No marriage is always easy and after 45 years, Jude candidly admits there have been some challenges.
“There have been some difficult times for me but I’m honestly not sure if it’s been difficult for Skroo. He probably hasn’t noticed,” Jude says.
“About 10 years ago, there was a time, I had to come to the realisation – and I can only assume that Skroo did too – that actually keeping the family together was what was most important to us.
“As long as he could keep on being dedicated to Flight Centre and I could do my own thing, we just stumble along.
“It’s only three years ago that we became grandparents (Jo’s daughter Luca, 3, and Matt’s boys Tom, 3 and Jack, 1) and that’s lovely and I’m pleased that we are still together for that companionship over our grandchildren.
“We are in a comfortable place now. That’s life – ups and downs. And it is about how you make it through.”
Jude describes her husband as “very smart”, calm and having a good sense of humour. They are qualities that first attracted her all those years ago and are “the things I still see in him”.
Also unchanging is his “total dedication and devotion” to his business.
“It comes first to everything,” Jude says.
“One thing about Skroo is that he will never retire. It’s just not even a word that we are allowed to speak. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t have anything big enough to take the place of Flight Centre. They will carry him out in a box.
“He has incredible energy and he does put most of that into Flight Centre I have to say. That’s his thing.
“One of his strengths is that he handles stress better than anyone I know. He never loses it. It’s almost annoying at times because he is so calm.”
Turner has always used exercise as his stress release. That, and a glass or two, or three, of good red wine.
He enjoys reading and names business books Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek as influences. He is also a member of a book club.
He exercises five days a week, including twice-weekly lunchtime staff touch football games, a tradition that has been going for 21 years. On the weekends he goes for 9-10km “run walks”, enjoys bike riding, and recently competed in the Noosa Triathlon. Turner and Jude regularly (before Covid) travelled with friends, bike riding in a different country each year. They plan to go to the UK and Greece in 2022.
Travel will return. Australians will travel again, as they always have, and Flight Centre will bounce back. Of these things, Turner has no doubt. The business may have fewer bricks and mortar shops and more call centres, but Turner believes he will get back to his previous sales figure of $24bn by June 2024.
There are “plenty of green shoots” with the Middle East and South African markets profitable again and a planned joint venture into Japan next year.
He believes leisure travel and visiting friends and relatives will return to normal volumes “very quickly”.
Some business travel will be replaced by teleconferencing websites like Zoom but, overall, business travel is expected to get back to 85 per cent of pre-Covid levels in three years .
As for his tenure in the top job, Turner gives himself “at least another five to 10 years”.
“I’d like to see us back to normal after this pandemic,” he says.
“I like work, I enjoy it and, so far, I get tolerated here. Hopefully I know when it’s time to go. It will depend on my physical and mental health but I’m perfectly comfortable for now.”
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