Women Uplift Travel: Why Women Are So Integral to the Industry

It’s common knowledge that in many industries, women don’t enjoy equal opportunities for executive roles, equal pay or even equal opportunity for general employment.

While the travel industry still has a long way to go before women are equally represented among its executive branches, travel has for decades enjoyed being a woman-centric industry, something that sets itself apart from many others.

From travel advisors to hotel employees to even those who purchase travel for their friends and families, women have enjoyed uniquely crucial roles within the travel industry.

Need some proof?

According to data published in 2019 by the World Travel & Tourism Council, women represent 54 percent of the travel and tourism industry's 334 million workers, which is above the average representation of women contributing to many countries’ overall economies.

In the U.S, women comprise about the same in the travel and tourism industry as they do in the country’s overall economy, about 46.4 percent versus 46.9 percent, though countries such as Mexico, South Africa and South Korea have seen more women employed in their travel industries than the average percentage of women employed in their overall economies.

But it’s not just about employment — women are also the ones booking and planning travel for people.

Travel advisors within the U.S. and Canada are predominantly women, comprising around 84 percent of all travel advisors in these two countries. Advisor conferences, webinars and other events are often indicative of this, with women comprising the vast majority of attendees and creating a fun, supportive community connected by their increasingly more often work-from-home or flexible, career.

It’s this flexibility and at-home career style that makes travel advising so approachable for women.

My own mother is a travel advisor with over twenty years of experience, and she loves joking that she was working remotely before it became a trend. But it also had practical applications: she was able to raise three kids as a stay-at-home mom and also have a career.

But women don’t just dominate working fields in the travel industry: they are also often the deciding factor in how people — namely, themselves, their families and their friends — travel.

Women typically make around 80-85 percent of all travel decisions — this number isn’t about the travel advisors, but instead the travelers who book and plan travel for their friends and family, with or without the help of a professional advisor.

So while gender inequality exists in the executive branches of this industry, other portions of the travel industry are predominantly female-focused.

I will not say that these parts of the industry are dominated by women, for domination is a wholly masculine word that brings to mind the age-old conqueror of ancient myth, stomping on those who once had power as a kind of punishment for his own once-humble origins, but I will say that these parts of the industry are uplifted by the number of women in them.

Uplifted because they are encouraging, because no one is against a percentage as high as 84 percent, and because one woman travel advisor has uplifted me, her own daughter, to participate in the conversation too, and in the historically masculine field of journalism.

One day, I hope to write that women executives in this industry share just as much space in their part of the industry as they do in travel advising, and that instead of using words like “domination” to describe it, they use words like “equalizing,” “uplifting,” and “equitable.”

This Women’s History Month, celebrate the women who participated in this industry across all of its categories and niches, who pave the way for the generations that will come after them, and if you are a woman in this industry yourself, remember this: your actions do matter. Thank you.