Travel is still a “sexy” industry to work in despite the ongoing challenges, according to the owner of Hays Travel.
Dame Irene Hays said the sector provides a “brilliant, sexy career” and it is up to those currently working within it to put the fun back into it.
Her comments came after Ben Bouldin, vice-president EMEA for Royal Caribbean, declared travel is “not the sexy industry that it once was”.
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“Fatigue in our industry is a real thing,” he said. “It’s been exhausting. To work in travel, you’ve got to be thick-skinned. Expectations are only getting higher so it’s not easy – and isn’t going to be for a while.”
He went on to say that there was real pressure on salaries.
“Just this week, we tried to hire someone for our social media team and from the start of the process until the end, her salary expectations went up by £20,000 because she had four other offers from outside travel,” he said.
“This makes holding onto our existing team even more important.”
Zina Bencheikh added that Intrepid was placing a huge focus on retention.
“We are looking at everything we can do to ensure we are able to keep our team that have been with us for the last two-and-a-half years.”
Former Der Touristik chief executive Derek Jones added: “Our cost base is artificially low as an industry at the moment because there’s a lot of understaffing everywhere.
“The way to compensate lower revenues is to hold your costs down and so there are firms working at 60%, 70%, 80% of their full staffing levels.
“But that just means everyone who is left is working so much harder. People start to leave and then you’ve got recruitment issues again.”
Jones urged everyone in the room to “go out and tell the story of how brilliant our industry is”.
He said: “We have to create the mindset in people that travel is fun.”
“We’ve always traded fun for paying a little less, but if it’s not fun right now, then we are going to have to pay a little more to keep hold of, and attract good people.”
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Pictures: Arif Gardner