Skift Take

Amidst the carnage, there are job openings in the travel industry. However, many of the opportunities won't get rank-and-file restaurant or hospitality workers back collecting paychecks and benefits anytime soon.

Despite the potential loss of nearly 200 million travel and tourism jobs this year under Covid-19-generated, worst-case scenarios, some travel companies around the world are still hiring.

Sure, the daily torrent of headlines, including United Airlines considering cutting 36,000 jobs and Skyscanner lopping off 300 positions in the past week, is unrelenting. And we are not trying to downplay the trauma.

But poke around travel companies’ career sections on their websites, LinkedIn, and other jobs sites, and you’ll find a smattering of open positions. For example, in a random search, we found several companies in Germany, where travel has rebounded fairly strongly, with open positions.

Following are a smattering of travel-related companies around the world looking to hire employees:

  • Marriott International listed some 1,400 open positions (posted in June and July), from front desk clerks to chief engineers, around the world. A note on the website said existing Marriott employees should apply through the human resources department.
  • Germany-based TUI Group lists around 70 open positions from a customer service job in Curacao to an iOS developer in London, and a legal counsel position in the Netherlands.
  • China’s Trip.com Group posted some 42 job openings; many were in China, including in public relations and finance. There’s also an opening for a project manager in the Netherlands, and business development roles in Taiwan and Japan.
  • Lufthansa Group, the German airline consortium, likewise has some 42 available jobs listed on its website. These include a tax consultant for payments subsidiary AirPlus International, a front-end developer for EuroWings, and a corporate law job, all in Germany.
  • Trivago and GetYourGuide, two independent companies, each showed about a dozen job openings, all in Germany. Trivago, the search company, offered various engineering jobs and product leads, as well as a technical accountant and statistician. GetYourGuide, the tours and activities firm, had openings in marketing, design, and engineering.
  • Flight Centre, the Australia-based travel agency, listed about a half-dozen openings, including in engineering in Australia, an account manager in Singapore, and a solutions design consultant in China.
  • Although not a travel company per se — but maybe one day — Amazon offered three travel-related positions, including a global partner development manager — travel, media and telecom in headquarter city Seattle, U.S., a Europe, Middle East and Africa travel hospitality specialist solutions architect in the UK, and a senior solutions architect for transportation logistics and the travel industry for Amazon Web Services in Japan. (Amazon indeed has a large travel vertical in its cloud business.)
  • Skyscanner didn’t list any open positions, but a Bloomberg story about 300 pending job cuts at the Trip.com Group-owned flight search engine quoted a spokesperson as saying 60 positions would be created as a result of consolidating operations.
  • Delta’s website said it is not actively hiring.


Source: World Travel & Tourism Council, June 10, 2020

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Tags: amazon, flight centre, getyourguide, labor, lufthansa, marriott, travel agents, trip.com, trivago, tui

Photo credit: Some luxury hotels in Chicago were working in February 2020 with Heartland Alliance, a nonprofit that helps refugees find jobs. Despite massive travel industry job losses around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, some travel companies are indeed hiring. WavebreakMediaMicro / Adobe Stock Image

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