TOUR-operating staff are as poorly paid as their travel agent colleagues and underpaid compared to other industries, a leading industry survey has revealed.
The research, carried out by analysts PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed that 67% of consultant staff only receive between £8,000 and £12,000, while nine in 10 overseas representatives are paid less than £8,000.
The extent of the industry’s pitiful salary structure emerged from exhaustive research in which 112 operators were quizzed. None of the vertically integrated companies responded to the survey.
The research also revealed that operators who look after their staff and pay incentives will reap the benefits in increased profit, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Malcolm Preston.
“Those who pay staff more than 20% of take-home pay in bonuses achieve a net profit per employee of £20,000, 9% higher than the average,” he said.
One-third of the operators questioned pay bonuses of more than 10% with 13 paying more than 20%.
The results mirror those of the Travel Agents’ Benchmarking survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier this year (Travel Weekly April 19). The poor pay among tour-operating staff follows previous criticisms that travel agents are exploited with low pay.
“It is normally retailers who attract most attention for being poorly paid,” said Preston. “However it would appear that those working in the tour-operating sector fare little better.
“For their level of skill they appear to be underpaid compared to their counterparts in other industries.”
The report also highlighted a lack of training with only 40% of management and less than 66% of sales staff receiving formal training
“Considering travel is a highly competitive and regulated market this is somewhat surprising,” said Preston.
The majority of operators said however that the introduction of a £3.60 minimum salary would not increase wage bills.
“Given that 42% of junior consultants are paid less than £8,000 this is surprising,” he said.
Of the 15% who believed their wage bill will increase, 7.5% said they would employ less staff with the remainder saying they will pay more rather than work staff harder.
n More survey results, see Clipboard page 75