In recent years we have been confronted with some uncomfortable truths about the low proportion of females leading large companies.
Thankfully we’ve seen research published on the wider travel industry too, rightfully highlighting an unfair and unhealthy balance.
But what about on the B2B side of the travel industry? A significant part of our industry is all about B2B services, whether that be distribution, technology, or behind-the-scenes services like DMCs or ground handling that the end traveller never sees.
We decided to find out for ourselves how many females are either the CEO or Chairperson at the top 350 B2B travel companies around the world, based on our Belvera B2B Travel Map.
The results are now in and sadly females make up just 12.4% of CEOs and a slightly less 12.1% of Chairpersons.
Analysing the B2B travel space by sector, the area that performs best for both the highest number of female CEOs and Chairpersons is jointly Hospitality Schools – with 29% and 43% respectively.
Whilst the worst performing areas are Hotel Distribution & Sales and Aviation, with just 5% of CEOs and 3% of Chairpersons respectively being female.
Are you surprised by these figures? Unfortunately the results don’t come as too big a surprise for us at Belvera. We suspect many others in the industry will feel the same way too.
So why did we do this? We were determined to establish the data to generate further discussion around this important topic.
We encourage you all to share these statistics – just simply share our LinkedIn or Twitter posts highlighting the research – and watch-out for further data as we track this over the years.
This data has been included as a new chapter edition to the Belvera B2B Sustainability Report 2021: sustainability reporting in B2B travel’s top 350 companies globally. This was originally published in August last year and you can download your free copy here now! As part of the wider report we have also looked at how many of the top 350 B2B travel companies are led by a non-white person. Those figures we will be released next month: spoiler alert, the results aren’t very positive sadly.
