P&O Cruises and Cunard parent Carnival UK has joined other leading travel firms in seeking to recruit female tech talent.
Tui, Booking.com, Skyscanner, The Travel Corporation and Travel Perk are also partnering with Code First Girls, a provider of free coding courses and employment opportunities for women, to search for new staff.
Code First Girls works with more than 120 partners in the UK and globally to actively place women into technology roles and close the industry’s gender gap.
Women make up just 19% of IT professionals in the UK, including cyber security and software development professionals, and 30% of web design experts, according to analysis of the latest ONS annual population survey.
However, the travel sector employs more women than men – with 54% of those working in the travel and leisure industry currently women.
Code First Girls provided 44,861 opportunities for women to learn how to code in 2022, compared to just 6,450 women who embarked upon undergraduate computing degrees in the UK.
It is estimated there will be five million new technology jobs in the recreation and travel industry by 2025.
As a result, Code First Girls is seeing an increasing number of women looking beyond roles offered by traditionally big tech firms, with organisations across the travel industry needing tech talent.
By actively recruiting women from non-technical backgrounds and employing a more diverse workforce, the UK’s leading travel firms are able to draw on the widest possible range of voices and insights, ensuring continued innovation and creative solutions, accord to the organisation.
Chief executive Anna Brailsford said: “We’re excited to partner with Carnival to help women break into the tech industry, whilst providing businesses across the travel sector with access to the top diverse talent they need in order for their tech offering to flourish.
“Through our partnerships with leading travel firms, we’re helping to close the long-term gender gap in the tech industry by giving women the opportunity to learn to code and get jobs in tech, at no cost to them.
“Just over half of the industry is made up of women and is therefore a leading light for a gender balanced workforce.”
Carnival UK chief technology officer Matt Denny said: “We are committed to creating an inclusive culture where everyone feels valued and that they belong.
“Women represent less than 25% of the technology workforce globally and we want to support women who may want to work with us. We can do this through helping them to gain experience and qualifications, securing technical jobs and progressing their careers.
“Our partnership with Code First Girls is helping us to address some of the challenges women face as they seek a career in technology.
“This starts with our sponsorship of 95 high potential women and non-binary individuals to level up with an eight-week beginner course, plus four Code First Girls degree places – creating four opportunities for junior data developers to join our data team here at Carnival UK.
“Technology underpins and enables every aspect of our business – we are constantly growing, and we want to ensure that as we grow, we represent our community and our guests.”
Chris Williamson, Tui Group mobile and payments domain owner, added: “Gender diversity in technology is still a real challenge, we especially see a lack of females in engineering positions across the industry.
“In my experience diverse teams perform better, deliver greater innovation and bring differing viewpoints to address challenges.
“I’m very excited about what we can achieve through our partnership with Code First Girls to address the challenge by bringing more females into travel technology.”
Jaana Inkinen, a Code First Girls graduate and software engineer at Skyscanner, said: “I came from a non-technical background and knew nothing about coding until I was 39 years old.
“Being able to re-train with Code First Girls at this point of my life has been priceless, and the job opportunity Skyscanner offered me as part of the CFG degree has completely changed my life.”