In a week where the world’s focus is on the role of women in all corners of society, Pamela Whitby hears where the biggest gaps are in online travel

What does online travel start up scene need? It was a question we posed in a story published just over a year ago and the answer back then was this: more women.

Call it a timeous marketing campaign or a serious effort to put women in the frontline but yesterday, on International Women’s Day, UK-based leisure airline Jet2.com took off from Leeds Bradford Airport to Amsterdam with an all-female crew. Everybody from the captain to the first officer and duty manager to cabin crew, ramp team, dispatcher and passenger service agents – everything necessary to get an aircraft off the ground safely and on time was ‘manned’ by women. 

Louise Iveson, a Jet2.com First Officer hoped that the move showed other women wanting to join the industry that there is nothing stopping them.

But is that the case in all corners of the travel industry? It seems not.

Asa Murphy, a former executive at Nordic Choice Hotels and now owner and CEO at BizStrat, lives in one of the world’s most feminist regions – the Nordics. But even here in Sweden, where for many years the notion of gender parity has been seen as the norm, Murphy has the impression that you are more likely to find women in travel in middle management roles.

Clio Knowles, VP of People at Virgin Hotels, admits that this is a challenge, even with a CEO who is strongly committed to hiring women. When Knowles first joined the Chicago-based team two and a half years ago, 65% of employees were women. However, over the past six months or so, over three women on the leadership team have taken time off for maternity leave and been replaced with men. Even at the hotel level there are more male employees than women.  Knowles is of the view that “women can’t have it all” but argues that we need to think more about making it easier to get women back into the work place.

Changing the rules of the game

Taking a stronger line is entrepreneur Heddi Cundle, the founder of myTab.co, a travel gift card for the USA and UK market. In Cundle’s view, one of the biggest problems today is that venture capitalists and angel investors invest in the ‘team’, and not in ‘innovation’.

“The pioneers of Silicon Valley should be turning in the graves in despair as investors now blatantly don’t fund innovation,” says Cundle, who doesn’t mince words. “The rules of these teams that receive funding are: 20-something male coders, with zero experience in their start up field and a shoddy business model.”

The pioneers of Silicon Valley should be turning in the graves in despair as investors now blatantly don’t fund innovation

Her view is that more can and should be done to finance businesses led by women entrepreneurs. It’s simply not enough to focus on female executives in middle management where most women seem to find themselves.

Says Cundle: “When Sheryl Sandberg [chief operating officer, Facebook] promotes #LeanIn and the vision of encouraging more executives, I’m surprised she’s blatantly disregarded female entrepreneurs. By only concentrating on execs and not founders, Sheryl has restricted her ability to use her powerful voice by ignoring the low hanging fruit that would change the systems dramatically and rapidly. I don’t believe travel is the only push, I believe this is an all technology centric issue…and solution.”

Finding solutions

The dearth of women in technology related roles is certainly an issue, and one that impacts the online travel industry where there is a growing demand for skills in mobile, data & analytics, cloud and social technologies.

Interestingly, an IBM survey of 1200 IT and business decision-makers across 13 countries reveals that while two-thirds of executives believe these technologies are strategically important, 25% report major skills gaps in each area, and 60% moderate to major shortfalls.

This could change if more women entered the IT workforce! According to IBM research OECD countries, women now account for less than 20%
of ICT specialists. In Europe it’s 30% and in the US just 23% of workers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related jobs are women.

In the upper echelons of business, the situation is even worse with women holding just 9% of IT management positions, and accounting for only 14% of senior management (when including non-technical departments) at Silicon Valley start-ups.

Women hold just 9% of IT management positions, and account for only 14% of senior management at Silicon Valley start-ups

Big names like Google, Facebook and Twitter have been in the spotlight this week too. While Google’s Doodles may do much commemorate women’s work, just 30% of its own employees are women and in tech departments that figure falls to 17%. At Facebook it’s a similar tale with women accounting for just 15% of tech employees and at Twitter 10%.

So over a year on from publishing a story that questioned what the online travel industry needs, the answer is still: more women. But specifically more women in tech roles and closing this gap must be a priority.

Join us in San Francisco next week (March 14-15) for Mobile & Innovation Strategies for Travel 2016 and hear more Heddi Cundle at the EyeforTravel Startup Village