After 18 years with Flight Centre Travel Group, experienced frontline travel advisor Jess Lowy has taken the leap into independent luxury travel. For her, it wasn’t just a career move – it was a lifestyle choice, writes Grant Jones.
After nearly two decades wearing the Flight Centre uniform, there comes a point where even the most loyal travel professionals begin asking themselves what’s next?
For Sydney-based travel advisor Jessica Lowy, the answer wasn’t another promotion or a move into management. Instead, it meant walking away from the security of one of Australia’s biggest travel companies to join fast-growing luxury travel network 360 Private Travel.
The move reflects a broader trend across Australia’s travel industry, with experienced consultants increasingly attracted to boutique agencies, home-based businesses and luxury-focused networks that promise greater flexibility, stronger client relationships and the opportunity to build their own brand.
After 18 years at Flight Centre, she isn’t leaving with any bitterness. Quite the opposite.
“I really dearly love the company,” she says. “I’m so appreciative of Flight Centre and the experience they gave me, the training, the travels and everything.”
It’s a sentiment shared by countless industry professionals who started their careers with Flight Centre, often describing it as the industry’s best training ground.
Joining the company in 2008 with no previous travel experience beyond a passion for exploring the world, she quickly found herself immersed in every aspect of retail travel.
“They offered one of the best training programs,” she says. “There aren’t many companies that train their staff up like that.”
Over the following 18 years she progressed through leadership roles, completed tourism qualifications and experienced countless product trainings, conferences and educational trips.
Unlike specialist agencies, Flight Centre’s consultants are expected to be experts across everything.
“You can sell everything from a flight to Melbourne to an Antarctica expedition,” she says. “You can’t really focus on any one thing because it depends what walks into the store.”
That broad knowledge proved invaluable, but over time her clients evolved. The backpackers and adventure travellers she was booking for trips through Vietnam and South America gradually became affluent families, empty nesters and luxury travellers seeking experiences rather than simply flights and hotels.
“I always joked that if you thought there was a cost-of-living crisis, come into a travel agency and see how much money people are spending,” she laughs. “There are still people willing to spend high amounts for premium experiences.”
It also highlighted something she increasingly wanted to offer.
“I just wanted to give my clients something I wasn’t able to focus on.”
Life after the pandemic
Like thousands of Flight Centre employees, her Rose Bay retail store closed almost overnight. She remained with the business through JobKeeper before eventually transferring into Bondi Junction after the company consolidated many of its eastern suburbs stores.
“It was a wonderful team,” she recalls. “But COVID, then the recovery, then all the global events… it’s been an interesting six years.”
Life outside work was changing too. Becoming a mother shifted priorities dramatically.
Working part-time while continuing to provide the high-touch service expected by long-term clients often meant opening the laptop after her daughter had gone to bed.
“I’d sit down at eight o’clock at night and really start my day,” she says, often staying up to 11pm to catch up on the day’s emails.
We’re very much involved in each other’s lives.
Eventually the work-life balance she had always managed began to feel unsustainable.
“I just didn’t want to be a number anymore.”
Watching 360 Private Travel establish itself in Australia over the past year sparked curiosity.
With an Australian arm founded by former travel industry executive Leah Greengarten, the business focuses on luxury travel, personalised service and gives advisors greater independence while remaining part of a supportive network.
“I’d been watching them since launch,” she says. “It looked like a wonderful community.”
After months of research and conversations with colleagues who had already made similar moves, she decided the timing was finally right. A family health scare reinforced the decision.
“My dad had cancer earlier this year and it was a bit of a life re-evaluation,” she says. “I needed to do something for me.”
The biggest surprise has been just how many clients wanted to follow her after she moved. After informing long-term customers she was leaving Flight Centre, many immediately requested her new contact details.
“The response was, ‘Please share your details. Of course we want to continue working with you’,” she says.
Those relationships have often spanned well over a decade. Some clients she first booked as young couples are now travelling with children – and increasingly, grandparents as well.
“They ask about my daughter,” she says. “We’re very much involved in each other’s lives.”
That level of trust is precisely what she believes independent advisors can build upon.
Instead of simply arranging transport and accommodation, she now wants to curate complete travel experiences.
“What are you going to do when you arrive?” she asks. “What experiences can we create for you?”
Whether that’s arranging private cooking classes, exclusive hotel experiences or once-in-a-lifetime encounters, she believes luxury travel today is less about five-star hotels and more about meaningful moments.
Reinventing yourself
The move also means creating her own business. Gone are the uniforms and daily sales. Now she’s self-employed, responsible for her own marketing, social media presence and business growth.
“It’s all new to me,” she admits. “I’ve never even been on LinkedIn!”
The transition isn’t without nerves. Building a personal brand requires discipline, particularly after spending nearly two decades inside a corporate structure but she sees enormous opportunity.
“This is a way I can be my own boss,” she says. “My customers win. I win.”
And she’s already noticed another benefit. Within days of joining, she had received invitations on two luxury famils – more than she’d seen in years. But for now, she’s staying put.
“I want to be available for my clients,” she says.
Her focus is completing training, learning new booking systems and ensuring every client enjoys a seamless transition.
As Australia’s travel agency landscape continues evolving, stories like hers are becoming increasingly common. Experienced advisors aren’t leaving the industry they’re simply reshaping the way they work.
For boutique luxury agencies, that’s creating an opportunity to attract some of the sector’s most experienced talent.
And for travellers, particularly those seeking bespoke, high-value holidays, it may also mean something increasingly rare in today’s digital world: a trusted advisor who knows not only where they’ve travelled, but where they dream of going next.
