James Lewis: Do Black Lives Matter in travel?

BAME Women in Travel executive director Jamie Lee Abtar recently identified there were only 33 leaders in the industry from the BAME community versus one in eight in the general UK population.

We have spent the last few years doing a fantastic job for the representation of women within senior roles and raising awareness of the LGBTQ+ community, yet we shy away from this issue.

BAME voices in the travel industry are only now starting to be heard after recent events created a platform for the Black Lives Matter movement.

But it is still hard to be heard through all the white privilege, bias and blindspots which are absolutely in every company’s culture and values.

I would encourage us all to look deeper inside of our businesses and challenge ourselves in our thinking around recruitment, marketing and people development.

But perhaps more importantly in the education of the next generation of travel leaders. I, for one, will be proposing how we address this through ITT’s Future You and education team.

We risk being left behind with our thinking and progress if we don’t address this now and make some real changes. We must realise these changes don’t necessarily have to come from the community they will affect, but from within, and then driven top-down for any progress to be made.

If you haven’t already started thinking about this subject, do it now by creating an internal framework to gather internal and external feedback, and do whatever you can to get the insight and support from the BAME community already in your business.

Let’s work together to make a real difference to equality of pay, positions and other imbalances to ensure the platform created by the BLM movement isn’t wasted.

This movement shouldn’t just be a two-week social media trend, or a hashtag; it has to result in lasting change.

James Lewis is head of partnerships at Holiday Extras, and sits on the board of the Institute of Travel and Tourism (ITT).