Travel organizations falling behind on diversity and leadership initiatives

It’s been two years since Phocuswright first fielded its Gender Equity Study, which concluded the travel industry had quite a way to go to bridge the gender gap in career development and management opportunity.

Over the following years, the industry has faced another monumental challenge in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, which travel is still recovering from.

Unsurprisingly, the crisis has disproportionately impacted women in the workforce – so much so that closing the gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.

According to Phocuswright’s 2021 Gender Equity Study, the share of women who feel the discussion around gender equity and women in leadership is extremely important is more than twice that of men.

Considering the effects of the pandemic, just 22% of men feel that the issue of gender equity and women in leadership is even more critical now than it was pre-pandemic compared to 44% of women.

Forty-six percent of men rate the travel industry as good or excellent with respect to gender equity for career development and management opportunities compared to 26% of women.

Men also see more leadership opportunities available to all at 59% compared to 29% of women, while a higher percentage of men – 54% - believe there is a clear, available path for leadership cultivation versus 25% of women.

Women and men also differ on the rationale for cultivating gender-equal leadership. According to the report, 68% of men say the rationale is to provide an environment of fairness and equality, while the same percentage of women believe cultivating gender-equal leadership enhances diversity of thought and knowledge and 44% say it enhances strategy and decision making.

Why is gender parity difficult to achieve?

Sixty-eight percent of women cite absence of a leadership track as the biggest obstacle to overcome to rise to leadership positions, followed by bias among management at 59%.

While 52% of women say bias among management is based on gender, only 26% of men feel similarly. Regarding race, just 14% of women and 20% of men say it accounts for bias among management.

Compared to 2019, a greater share – 53% - say lack of work-life balance as an obstacle to rise to leadership positions, likely due to the pandemic-related challenges.

According to McKinsey & Co. research, women are also more burned out than men, with 42% of women saying they have been often or almost always burned out in 2021 compared to 32% a year ago.

Somewhat worrisome is that, despite the increasing challenges faced by women, the share of Phocuswright respondents who indicated that their organizations are taking no initiatives to increase diversity has more than doubled – 23% versus 11% - compared to 2019.

The top initiatives organizations have instituted in 2021 include diversity training (30%), an equity in pay scale program (26%) and unconscious bias training (23%).

Respondents cite complex problem-solving (51%), creativity (43%) and critical thinking (41%) as the skills that will be most important in the travel industry over the next three years.

Eighty-one percent also believe intangible skills – including leadership, innovation, creativity and teamwork – will be more important as the travel industry recovers from the pandemic.

A full discussion of the findings, featuring Phocuswright analyst Coney Dongre, Go City COO Carrie Tayloe Keplinger and UN Women UK advocate Simon Gallow and moderated by PhocusWire news editor Jill Menze, is below.