The retail chain, which has a total of 86 branches – and will be opening another within six months – is half way through a four to five-year plan to overhaul every store.

The changes made so far have led to an increase in awareness from customers that Flight Centre does not just sell flights.

“We’ve got this huge shop network and felt we weren’t making the most of it,” Alison Zacher, retail managing director UK and Ireland, Flight Centre, told TTG.

“We are committed to the high street and we wanted to ensure that we were contributing to communities positively and creating spaces that could showcase everything we had to offer in an accessible way.”

The changes have included relocating certain shops – Clapham Junction, Chester and Deansgate in Manchester, for example – “yards down the road” to larger premises that offer more display space and visibility into the stores.

“We’ve attracted customers who didn’t even know we were there before, and those who didn’t realise we sold holidays,” said Zacher.

She added that the recently overhauled flagship Oxford Street, London, shop in particular had seen a marked increase in the number of customers enquiring about long-haul holidays rather than just flights.

Changes in-store include “Journeys” and “Escapes” holidays being displayed in interactive “discovery zones” with maps that can be drawn upon to help customers “visualise their routes”. Brochures have additionally been brought out from behind the counter.

Flight Centre also wanted to “create an environment that travel consultants can also thrive in”.

In many of the refurbished stores, walls that would normally separate the company’s specialist office-based teams from the rest of the consultants have been removed to encourage camaraderie and knowledge sharing.

Zacher told TTG that Flight Centre plans to maintain its current number of shops, half of which are located within London and Greater London.

“We are always looking for opportunities to grow,” she added.