Last year, the government ordered all businesses with more than 250 members of staff to report specific figures on their gender pay disparity.

The firm this week issued its first gender pay gap report shortly before the midnight April 4 deadline.

Kuoni revealed it employs 411 female staff (78%) and 117 male (22%), with 50% of its senior management team female and 58% of its leadership team female.

It attributed the 27% disparity to the high percentage of female staff in lower salary quartiles and said it did not consider the firm, the UK outpost of Germany’s DER Touristik, had an issue with equal pay.

“Our first gender pay gap report confirms we have an excellent gender balance throughout our business,” said Kuoni. “We’re proud 78% of our overall workforce is female along with half of our senior management.

“We have a very good gender balance at all levels of the organisation and an overall mean gender pay gap of 27%. We are confident our employees, male and female, are paid equally for doing equivalent jobs across our business.”

Kuoni’s lower pay quartile is 84.1% female and 15.9% male, lower mid 83.2% female to 16.8% male, upper mid 80.2% female to 19.8% male and upper 61.6% male to 38.4% female.

The company said the gap was “strongly influenced” by the salaries and gender make-up of its retail operation where 83% of employees are female and like many sales roles, earnings are topped up by performance related pay.

Derek Jones, chief executive of DER Touristik UK, said: “As a travel business which has been in the UK market for more than 50 years, our success is built on outstanding customer service, which is bedded into our work ethic.

“As such we recruit for attitude and aptitude to attract a diverse selection of applicants and employees to our business, which personify our brand values.

“We take pride in our efforts to be inclusive, with coaching and career progression plans for everyone regardless of gender and, in producing this report, commit to continuing to improve balance within our organisation.”

Kuoni said its ambition was to create an “inclusive and fair” working environment for all employees where they can thrive regardless of gender.

The firm also revealed some of its efforts to achieve this, including a series of “coaching conversations” workshops for managers attended by 114 senior figures last year and its partnership with Everywoman.