We’ve all either heard it or said it ourselves: “why do you want to work in travel?” It’s a standard interview question for most companies when recruiting. Yet many are already picking up subtle changes in the answers given by younger candidates – and it’s not good news.
Besides telling us they love travelling themselves, candidates’ responses frequently used to be followed by the words “after I did my season(s)”. Post-Brexit, these are not experiences younger candidates can so easily draw on.
Let’s remember, it is today’s younger recruits who will tomorrow be advising customers on their holiday choices, or negotiating the accommodation, transport and logistics that make those holidays possible.
They are the future managers, directors and entrepreneurs in our sector. And it’s vitally important we invest in our “talent pipeline”. We are a service industry more than a booking platform – we’d all much rather be dealing with someone who has been to our holiday destination or knows the country.
Together with Abta, we at Seasonal Businesses in Travel (SBiT) pointed out in our joint Unlocking Travel’s Potential report how the sector has a strong track record developing and retaining recruits.
More than a third (38%) of staff employed at businesses in the UK travel industry have worked a season overseas. And this effectively rises to one in two (49%) when you look just at senior managers in the travel sector. It’s an amazing statistic, one that demonstrates how both in-destination knowledge and service experience are key in our sector. We should be proud.
Yet we have seen marked decreases in opportunities for young people to gain this crucial experience; the number of UK workers in the EU decreased by more than two-thirds (69%) in 2023 when compared with 2017 according to Abta and SBiT’s research.
Whatever your political persuasion, there is consensus that growing the economy is a priority for government. So perhaps more significantly, 90% of the businesses that responded to the joint Abta-SBiT survey told us an agreement on youth mobility would help their growth prospects over the next five years. That’s a lot of untapped potential that could go to waste without a UK-EU youth mobility scheme.
The travel industry needs this. It is madness we have reciprocal schemes in place with the likes of India, Canada, Australia, Uruguay, San Marino, Iceland, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea but not our biggest and, more importantly, closest trading (and tourism) partner.
There’s no “popping back” to see family when you are in Uruguay or New Zealand. The current youth mobility schemes we have in place favour those with the resources to go that far.
A youth mobility scheme would work both ways for us and EU nations. And to be clear, it would permit only temporary stays of up to two years, give no right to residency and would be limited in number. It is not immigration of any kind, and nor does it constitute free movement. So let’s not include it in those debates.
Our industry could be a powerhouse of economic growth, but it needs the necessary frameworks to be put in place to unlock this potential again. Youth mobility would be a vital training and development opportunity for our talent pipeline and for the betterment of our industry.
Diane Palumbo is a director of Seasonal Businesses in Travel, a campaign group representing the interests of several hundred seasonal outbound travel businesses.
