One of the biggest challenges facing travel businesses coming out of the pandemic has been recruiting and retaining staff. As such this has also been an important focus of ABTA’s work in recent years.

Earlier this year we ran an advertising campaign to demonstrate why the travel industry is such a great place to work, to encourage people to come and join our sector. It was targeted at not only those who have worked in the industry previously, but also those who might want to start out in travel or make a career change. 

The latest phase of the ‘Be Part of Travel’ campaign centered on videos of ABTA members and industry colleagues talking about the benefits of working in travel and the fantastic career opportunities available. The videos were advertised across social media and were seen over 600,000 times.  

Around 80 members and education partners supported the campaign during National Careers Week by sharing the video content on their own channels and with their staff; it was also shown at university, college and industry events. The campaign materials have been designed to have a long shelf life, and so we are continuing to share all of them across our channels, and they are also available for members to use for your own recruitment campaigns. They can be found in the Member Zone.

The campaign built on ABTA’s existing activity around education and skills, which includes ABTA’s university and college education partner programme and our student rep initiative. 

A critical part of this work is providing students with opportunities to connect with employers, whether that’s through mentoring or offering students the chance to visit workplaces. It’s a great way to nourish enthusiasm for working in travel. We know students hugely value this opportunity and we would encourage more ABTA members and partners to consider offering it. If you would like to find out more please contact Vicki Wolf. We’re also pleased to be working with Travel Weekly once again on its Take Off in Travel publication – another source of inspiration for aspiring travel sector employees. 

As you may have heard at Travel Matters last week, the future of post-16 travel, tourism and aviation courses is uncertain beyond 2026. ABTA is working as part of the Tourism Education and Skills group to clarify the situation and look to find a solution. It does appear that there may be an opportunity to develop a new course and we explain more about that in our fact sheet here.  

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive