International Women in Travel and Tourism Forum (IWTTF) delegates were on Thursday (27 June) told to "stop passing the DEI ball around" and to reach out and "catch it" instead.
"Everyone likes to talk about DEI and pat their back for having the conversation as if they’re done their bit," said Uwern Jong, editor in chief of OutThere magazine, who was speaking at the forum as part of an allyship panel moderated by TTG Media CEO Daniel Pearce.
"But when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, you’ll be wanting to catch the ball and take action."
Jong told delegates companies needed to build continuous education on DEI into their longer-term planning, as well as create or participate in networks to tackle challenges and create allyships.
One of these efforts is the IWTTF Male Allyship programme, which aims to bring men into the DEI conversation while empowering women, especially those from under-represented groups.
Running for the third consecutive year, the allyship programme pairs a senior male leader in the industry with a woman or non-binary individual looking to grow their business or develop specific skills.
One of these women is travel agent Clara Lojo, who was part of this year’s cohort of mentees and was paired with Holiday Architects owner Andrew Hunt.
Lojo told delegates the mentorship programme was a “transformational” experience, as Hunt provided her with the advice and support she needed to help her change the way she looked at her business and how she made decisions.
“I definitely know I will look back at this experience in the medium to long-term and see it was a pivotal moment in my career,” she said.
Another programme is ElevateHer – the current iteration of Women in Travel CIC’s employability programme – which has been running for the past few years.
“There are a lot of companies that talk about DEI but ElevateHer is a great practical way of doing DEI,” said Jackie Clark, chief commercial officer at luxury concierge DiamondAir International, one of the programme’s partners.
Meanwhile, David Atkin, founder of risk management consultancy Atkin Jones and IWTTF Male Allyship mentor for a second consecutive year, called for the allyship programme to be expanded to have both mentors and mentees involved.
According to WeTravel director of partnerships and enterprise sales Shayna Zand, companies don’t need to overcomplicate things and just need to take small steps to improve their DEI policies.
“At WeTravel, we have a Slack channel called WeTravel Proud as one of our funders is part of the LGBTQ+ community, but it was actually our chief executive who introduced the channel,” she said.
“It’s really simple things that can make such a difference within our businesses.”
