Skift Forum Europe: Peak DMC’s Zina Bencheikh on Creating a Pipeline for Women in Travel

After travel company Intrepid Group announced plans in 2017 to double the number of female tour guides it employed around the world by 2020, Zina Bencheikh knew she had some work ahead. At the time, she was regional finance manager for Peak DMC, Intrepid's destination management company, operator, and product developer, but soon after she became general manager of Europe and Morocco. And there were no women working for the company as tour guides in Morocco; in fact, she said, only 4 percent of the country's guides were women. Morocco had an especially high bar to entry because of stringent regulations in place to earn a license to be a tour guide. So Bencheikh lobbied the government for help and went about finding women to prepare for the test; now, the company employs 13 women as tour guides in the country. She said the company has increased its overall number of female tour guides by 77 percent so far. Now regional general manager for Europe, the Middle East, and North Afr