Salaries for new travel jobs rose by just 0.32% in 2020 to reach an average of £28,287, despite pandemic, according to figures out today.
C&M Travel Recruitment and sister brand C&M Executive Recruitment surveyed all their new vacancies registered during last year to produce the figures for their annual Travel Salary Index.
The marginal rise for travel jobs continues an upward trend seen since 2015. The average wage rose 5% in 2019 and just over 3% in 2018.
Average salaries for ‘standard’ new jobs in travel – those paying up to £40,000 – saw a bigger rise of 3.7% last year to reach £25,863, the sixth consecutive year of increases.
However, there was a small drop in salaries for higher-paid senior placements, with average pay for executive travel roles – those paying £40,000 and above – dropping by 2.6% in 2020 to £57,065. This was the first annual fall in executive wages since 2015.
The number of new job vacancies in the travel industry fell by 74% in 2020 and by 93% between April and December 2020, compared to the same months in 2019.
Despite a large number of redundancies in the industry, there was also a significant fall in candidates searching for new travel jobs, with registrations dipping by 41%, and by 53% year-on-year since the beginning of the pandemic.
Barbara Kolosinska, director at C&M Travel Recruitment and C&M Executive Recruitment, said: “Recruitment activity plummeted to levels that we couldn’t ever have imagined, and we sadly lost many companies along the way.
“However, we are now gradually seeing travel recruitment levels rise month by month, and 2021 has got off to an extremely encouraging start.
“January resulted in the highest number of new travel vacancies since the original lockdown in March 2020, and this month is looking set to be even busier.
“We’ve learned over the past year or so that we need to be very cautious when making any predictions or projections about the state of the travel industry in the coming months, but things certainly do appear to be moving in the right direction and becoming more positive by the month.”