If you’ve ever tried to buy foreign currency in an airport chances are you are dealing with Travelex.
Today, in the expectation of leaving Sydney for LA, I bought $US150 dollars with my Australian debit card at Sydney airport. The $US is worth around $AU1.05, but the rate I was offered was 0.9530, plus a $AU12 charge, so for my $US150 I ended up paying $AU169.40, which by my calculation means Travelex made a minimum of $AU26.54 on my paltry transaction, a profit of around 17%.
Multiply that and you can see how Travelex is a successful business. Now I have benefited many times from their subsidy of the National Theatre, which means many of their best seats can be bought for £12, if you’re quick enough. So grateful in fact is the National that once it is refurbished their smallest theatre, hitherto the Cottesloe, will be reopening as the Dorfman – not, as many people have surmised, named after the playwright Adriel Dorfman but after Lloyd Dorfman, Chairman of Travelex, which rather to my surprise turns out to be a British company.
I guess that is fair enough, and it certainly makes me less concerned about being ripped off at the airport. But this is Sydney, and I am wondering what, as a global company, Travelex is doing here, and in other major cities, to support the arts in the way it does in London.
Travelex is doing the same thing as BT (British Telecom) is doing here – not much for us, and certainly not much for you!