The reveals that females make up just 12.4% of the CEOs of the world’s top 350 B2B travel companies and a slightly less 12.1% of Chairpersons.
Analysing the B2B travel space by sector, the area that performs best for both the highest number of female CEOs and Chairpersons is jointly Hospitality Schools – with 29% and 43% respectively.
Whilst the worst performing areas are Hotel Distribution & Sales and Aviation, with just 5% of CEOs and 3% of Chairpersons respectively being female.
This data is taken from a new chapter edition to the Belvera B2B Sustainability Report 2021: sustainability reporting in B2B travel’s top 350 companies globally – which was originally published in August of this year.
Roman Townsend, Managing Director of Belvera Partners comments: “Sadly the results of this research don’t come as too big a surprise to me and I suspect many others in the industry will feel the same way too.
“So why do this? We were determined to establish the data to generate further discussion around this important topic. I encourage you all to share these statistics and watch-out for further data as we track this over the years.
“We have also looked at how many of the top 350 B2B travel companies are led by a non-white person and we´ll be releasing that data soon: spoiler alert, the figures aren’t encouraging.”
Breakdown by sub-sectors of B2B travel:
Sector | Female CEOs | Female Chairperson |
Aviation | 6% | 3% |
Business Travel | 26% | 23% |
Cruise | 7% | 7% |
Consortia | 10% | 24% |
Car Rental | 6% | 11% |
Hotel Distribution and Sales | 5% | 8% |
Hospitality Schools | 29% | 43% |
Investors | 14% | 24% |
Lobby Groups | 18% | 18% |
Travel Tech | 8% | 6% |
Tradeshows & Events | 16% | 9% |
Trade Media | 24% * | 8% |
Average across all sectors | 12.4% | 12.1% |
*Note: instead of CEOs we looked at Editors for travel trade media publications
Notes: all figures were rounded up to nearest whole number for ease
The full report – The Belvera B2B Sustainability Report 2021: sustainability reporting in B2B travel’s top 350 companies globally – analyses the current state of sustainability reporting in the B2B travel space by reviewing the websites of the top 350 B2B travel organisations.
It establishes how many have published a report, clear policies or other information related to the topic, in addition to looking at how many have female CEOs or Chairpersons.
Organisations selected for review were based on the Belvera B2B Travel Map, which is a metro-style rendition of the B2B travel ecosystem published and regularly updated by Belvera Partners.
The highlights of the study reveal that overall the sector still has a very long way to go when it comes to sustainability reporting:
- Only 17% have a sustainability report (even using the broadest possible definition)
- Whilst only a slightly higher 24% have some kind of ‘policies’ publicly available
- Merely 3% feature sustainability as a clear tab at the top of their home page
- In fact, 57% don´t mention sustainability (or similar terms) in any meaningful way on their sites, even once
- Based on how many publish a report, aviation is the highest performing sector and consortia and car rental the lowest
