Skift Take
Travel brands' employees must represent the growing diversity of the world's travelers. The U.S. travel industry as a whole made progress towards that goal last year but it largely remains an industry with a sea of white faces.
The U.S. travel industry's diversity dilemma, uneven as it is among various job types, persisted in 2015 but each sector also increased its percentage of non-white employees.
Data from the the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics show airline pilots still claimed the most white faces of any occupation in the travel industry last year (91 percent). The percentages of African American, Asian and Hispanic or Latino airline pilots, however, increased 3.7 percentage points last year and 9.4 percent of pilots were women. The bureau included women, African American, Asian and Hispanic or Latino in its racial and gender demographic breakdowns in 2015.
Increases in percentages of non-white hires outnumbered decreases 13 to eight but some of the decreases were significant. U.S. hotels, for example, saw their percentage of Hispanic or Latino front desk employees fall from 25.1 percent in 2014 to 18.7 percent in 2015. Tour operators' percentage of Hispanic of Latino employees fell by six percent and tour operators and travel agencies' percentage of African American employees decreased more than two percentage points.
Hotel front desk staff, reservation and ticket agents and flight att
