The salary study by the travel specialist agency revealed the average female travel worker took home a salary 18.4% lower than their average male counterpart during 2018. This gender pay gap was only 12.8% in 2017.

C&M added that while women accounted for 69% of all new travel employees in 2018, men secured 62% of all new executive travel positions, classified as those jobs paying more than £40,000 per year.

The largest gender pay gap was found in the higher-paid executive travel jobs, with women making an average of £51,503 per year compared with £57,245 for men in similar roles – a difference of 10.6%.

But there were also smaller gender pay gaps across all job levels in the industry: for entry level positions of less than £22,000, men earned 1.8% more than women, while for mid-level positions (salaries between £22,000 and £29,999) there was a 1.25% gender pay gap.

The smallest percentage gender gap was for senior roles (salaries of £30,000 to £39,999) where there was a difference of just 0.4% between the pay of women and men.

Barbara Kolosinska, director at C&M Travel Recruitment and C&M Executive Recruitment, said: “Despite the huge amounts of press coverage, the gender pay gap still appears to be widening in the travel industry.

“This is very disappointing to see, and it means that many companies in our industry will need to work harder to ensure that we move closer towards achieving pay parity. In particular, we need to see more women securing higher-paid executive positions.”

Earlier this week, Thomas Cook admitted that it “some way to go” to reduce its gender pay gap across the tour operator’s business.

Last year it became compulsory for all companies with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay figures annually at the end of the financial year.

Sarah Clayton-Turner, chair of the Association of Women Travel Executives (AWTE), added: “Just when you think that we are starting to make some headway with all of the recent gender pay gap initiatives, it would appear that we still have such a long way to go in our industry.

“While it’s great that we are seeing some parity in senior roles, I find it incredible that there is still such an imbalance of a 10% pay difference in executive roles. We have to look into why this is – are females simply not applying for these roles? If not, why not?

“It’s something we are very passionate about at AWTE, and we have confidence-building courses running throughout the year for our members in an attempt to tackle some of these issues.”