Tell someone you work in travel and most people will assume you’re an agent or cabin crew, full stop. It’s a familiar shortcut, and with full respect to frontline roles, a limiting one, because it shrinks a global industry into two job titles and hides everything that lies behind them.
How the travel industry became its own worst recruiter
Travel is one of the most underestimated employers out there. It’s vast, global, and complex. It fuels economies, drives innovation, and touches almost every corner of business. Yet the wider world still sees it through a narrow lens.
Ask someone what a career in finance looks like, and they’ll talk about banking or investment. Mention tech, and you’ll hear about coding or start-ups. But mention travel? Nine times out of ten, it’s reduced to being an agent. That perception means we’re missing out on a wave of talent that could transform the industry. Graduates and specialists often don’t realise there’s a place for them here, and the industry is poorer for it.
Behind every retail consortia, airline, hotel, cruise line, and tour operator is a whole ecosystem of careers that go far beyond booking trips. Finance teams manage billions in transactions. HR leaders steer workforces across continents. Marketers fight for attention in one of the most competitive industries on earth. Tech teams build booking platforms, secure payments, and data systems that rival any start-up. Sustainability experts are reshaping how the industry operates. It’s a career machine spanning every discipline imaginable.
The young and the restless: What the next wave of travel talent needs right now
If we keep letting people think travel equals ‘agent,’ we’ll lose a generation of talent
The competition for talent has never been tougher. Tech giants, consultancies, and financial firms are scooping up the brightest minds with glossy programs and polished employer brands. Meanwhile, travel often undersells itself. The risk is obvious: if the industry keeps letting itself be pigeonholed as holidays and brochures, it will miss out on the people who could drive the next wave of innovation.
So how does the industry change the story? It needs to rebrand travel as an employer, showing that it’s dynamic, global, and rich with opportunities for specialists. It needs to tell real stories about the CFOs, HR directors, IT architects, and sustainability leads already shaping the future. It should put as much energy into recruitment marketing as consumer marketing. And it should start earlier, showing students and young professionals that travel isn’t a job you fall into, but a career you can grow in.
Our industry doesn’t just book trips. It builds global careers. From finance to HR, IT to marketing, sustainability to operations, it offers opportunities as ambitious as banking, consulting, or tech.
The next time someone says, “Oh, so you’re a travel agent?” the answer should be simple and loud: “Travel is so much more”.
This piece reflects the personal opinion of a Karryon reader.
KARRYON UNPACKS: Travel won’t attract the talent it needs until it actively shatters the “agent equals travel” stereotype says this reader. To broaden our reach and flourish, they say the industry must speak directly to specialists who power airlines, hotels, cruise lines, wholesalers, and tech teams behind the scenes.
