The Women in Travel vertical will host co-created content with industry experts to provide tools and resources on topics like supporting intersectionality in climate justice, inclusive travel experiences to add to your product, and empowering equal outcomes within a travel business. The business’s commitment is to bring BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, cis women, any individual who identifies as a woman or with femininity, including transwomen, transfeminine, and non-binary individuals, together, in one place.
“As a vertical business, specifically built for the travel industry, we’ve critically considered opportunities to further support communities that are touched by tourism - and all stakeholders within communities - to use our business as a force for good,” said Zaky Prabowo, WeTravel’s co-founder and chief marketing officer. “When we launched the WeTravel Academy to provide free access to travel resources, many by women, we saw the good it was doing to support the industry. Naturally, adding a vertical that provides tools to make change to better represent women in travel is an important part of the Academy’s mission.”
The WeTravel Academy was launched in December 2021, as a free resource for travel-specific content in 12 topics with more than 500 pieces. To date, more than 2,500 travel companies and travel advisors have downloaded educational tools from the source, with top-downloaded content falling into three categories: Sustainability, Inclusive Travel and Wellness.
While the Academy content will continue to represent all genders, backgrounds and experiences, the Women in Travel vertical is a dedicated space within the Academy to host content that’s by women, for women – and men to better support women.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, “Tourism has a pivotal role to play in achieving the objectives at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular the commitments to gender equality and empowerment of women of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls).” In tourism’s workforce, women make up most positions, concentrated in the lowest paid and lowest status jobs. Women also perform the lion’s share of unpaid work in family tourism businesses.
“Joining forces with other influential women in the travel industry to provide a collective of resources that support women in travel will create a safe space for women to learn from each other and facilitate peer-to-peer education,” said Prabowo. “It will also offer tools for men to learn from women in the industry.”
The Women in Travel vertical is an extension of WeTravel’s commitment to better representation in the industry and its business. With nearly 50 percent of its employees identifying as women - and representing more than 10 nationalities - WeTravel’s also taken intentional steps in all aspects of its hiring, pay equity and promotional efforts to empower equal outcomes in its business. In May 2022, it also launched an Engineering Tech Internship Program for those who may not have the opportunity to be paid to learn about technology, with successful candidates being offered full-time Engineering roles at WeTravel. Within its first week, the Engineering program has filled; with four of five interns identifying as women, living in three countries, with no previous technology education.
