As summer vacation season winds down – only to be replaced by fall conference season – it’s discouraging to note that it’s entirely possible to for you book your journey, give the pilot a perfunctory once-over, get settled into to your aisle seat, and check-in to your hotel – and never encounter a travel professional of color.
Although the travel sector made modest diversity gains in 2015, the entire industry – from airline pilots and flight attendants to reservation takers, hotel clerks and tour guides – remains overwhelmingly white.
Skift, an analyst firm covering the travel industry, has published their annual review of diversity in the travel business. The tale of the tape: Some 91% of airline pilots are white, as are 73% of flight attendants, 70% of travel agents and 81% of tour and travel guides. The best news came in the hotel and motel desk clerk category, which is now 52% white. “And that took a long time to get there,” the report explains. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
“When one considers the rapidly increasing buying power of women and people of color, the opportunity costs for a lack of diversity can be massive,” says Genhi Bailey, Director of Diversity and Inclusion from the law firm DLA Piper. (Just one example: African American vacation spending grew 52% from 2015 to 2016, says MMGY Global, a global travel marketing firm.)
“Of course diversity is not the only factor to success – the product or service must be a quality one, but diversity can help organizations gain and maintain market share.” As someone who travels a lot for business she says, “I ALWAYS notice when there is a person of color behind the desk – especially at high-end hotels and facilities. And I remember those places.”
Diversity, even behind the scenes, leads to a better customer experience in a world where everyone travels. “We have built out the diversity of our product teams and we saw the caliber of our testing and experimentation improve significantly,” says Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com. She says the company employs people from 100 different nationalities, 50% of whom are women. “We found we were able to create better, customer-centric product features more quickly with a more diverse product team.”
For the face-to-face world, Bailey says that focusing on the pipeline is key. “Target diverse students studying hospitality at places like Cornell University and UW-Stout,” she says. Smart companies offer targeted internships and fellowships even for high schoolers, but, she cautions, “be sure to hire more than one diverse candidate at a time – being the “lonely only” can lead to feelings of isolation and attrition.”
But with the airline industry facing a fairly significant labor shortage for pilots, why are they still so stunningly white and male? We’ll dig into that in a separate column. But one air carrier, the regional Republic Airlines, is trying some interesting things. We’ll peek into their cockpit.
On Point
| Organization calls out Donald Trump for avoiding Hispanic media |
| Latino Victory, an organization that advocates for Latino representation in politics, published an online petition accusing Donald Trump of ignoring Hispanic media for over a year - with the exception of personal attacks on individual reporters and denials of access to the candidate.“Unfortunately for Donald, if he wants to get to the White House, he has to go through us.” |
| Media Matters |
| Facebook’s “point system” for recruiters fails to diversify their ranks |
| For the last two years, Facebook has incentivized its in-house recruiters in a bid to increase the diversity of their hiring pool with a scaled “points” system linked to bonuses. One point for a white or Asian male engineer, and now, two points for anyone else. Despite sweetening the pot, the company’s numbers of black, Hispanic and female engineers haven’t budged. “All of us are lost with diversity,” one recruiter told the Wall Street Journal. |
| Wall Street Journal |
| Another reason why black travelers are wary of Airbnb? |
| While black travelers are one of the fast growing segments of the travel market, as a cohort, they are still relatively new to travel, says the two dope boys of 2 Dope Boys & A Podcast, Michael Brooks and Philip L. McKenzie. Could the racial history of the U.S. - which might make black travelers nervous about staying with white strangers - be the real reason why black travelers have been slow to embrace Airbnb? |
| 2 Dope Boys |
| Politics and test score gaps in the U.S. |
| Poor, black and Latino students do worse on tests in the U.S. But why? This new research report is a goldmine for policy wonks looking to identify specific remedies that can help eliminate unequal education opportunities for any underperforming demographic. But the research also reveals the public’s opinion of K-12 test score gaps. Turns out, voters are more interested in addressing the gaps between rich and poor, than they are between black and white or Hispanic and white students. And that influences their elected officials. |
| Sage Journals |
| Tulsa man harassed, shot and killed by neighbor for being a “dirty Arab” |
| For nearly a decade, Khalid Jabara, along with his brothers and parents, had been harassed by their neighbor, Stanley Vernon Majors. Majors screamed ethnic epithets and threats. He’d even hit Jabara's mother with his car. The family filed a restraining order. Last week, Majors walked up to the porch of the family’s home and shot and killed Jabara. The Council on American-Islamic Relations told CNN his death mirrors a growing trend. |
| CNN |
The Woke Leader
| What we mean when we say we’re not a racist |
| Greg Howard, a David Carr fellow at the New York Times, has written an important essay on our long, tortured history with the idea of being “racist,” and how the toxic nature of the accusation prevents us from talking about real solutions. “Racism ceased to be a matter of systems and policy and became a referendum on the rot of the individual soul,” he writes. “This was a convenient thing for white Americans to believe.” A must read. |
| New York Times |
| When the police kill the homeless, nobody cares |
| Journalist Julia Carrie Wong spent months piecing together the sad life and pointless death of Luis Demetrio Góngora Pat, the “homeless man with a soccer ball” living in the San Francisco, who was brutally killed by police last April. His was a tale of poverty, despair and addiction, but he did have a home that he never saw - in the tiny Mayan village of Teabo, in the Mexican province of Yucatán, built with remittances sent faithfully over seven years. |
| The Guardian |
| On being a black administrator at school |
| Kelly Wickham Hurst is an educator, administrator, advocate and blogger, known for her willingness to tackle the tough issues of race and income inequality in Illinois classrooms she’s overseen for two decades. When she was demoted from her school administration job, labeled as “difficult” and “hard to manage” – she decided to quit and become a full time advocate for justice in the classroom. “My work relationship mirrored that of the students I was advocating for in the first place.” |
| Tuesday Night |
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