C&M reveals travel's gender pay split in 2025

LONDON - Rezul --

• Travel industry's gender pay gap widens again in 2025
• Men in travel taking home 21.90 per cent more than women
• Females take vast majority of lower paid roles…
• …while males awarded most high-earning jobs

The gender pay gap in the travel industry widened again in 2025, according to new research from C&M Travel Recruitment.

As an average across the industry, women working in travel took home 21.90 per cent less than male colleagues last year, compared to gaps of 13.83 per cent in 2024 and 11.15 per cent in 2023.

This is the biggest overall pay gap since 2016 when the difference stood at 24.62 per cent.

This meant that the gender pay gap totalled £8,496 in 2025 (up from £5,238 in 2024 and £3,678 in 2023), with women earning an average of £34,547 (down from £35,245 in 2024) while men received £43,043 (up from £40,483 in 2024).

However, the overall gap was skewed due to two key factors – women took the vast majority of the travel industry's lower-paid roles in 2025, while men were awarded most of the highest salaried positions.

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For lower-paid roles (those paying up to £29,999) women outearned men by 0.88 per cent (or £234). However, women were placed in 78 per cent of travel's lowest paying roles last year – up from 69.3 per cent in 2024 and 68.5 per cent in 2023.

In contrast, men took 61.3 per cent of the highest earning travel roles (those paying £60,000 and above), which was up from 61.1 per cent in 2024 and 57.9 per cent in 2023. The gender wage gap at the top of the industry stood at 7.80 per cent with male executives taking home around £5,979 more than female equivalents in 2025.

Overall, females continued to be awarded most new jobs in the travel industry in 2025 with a total of 63.4 per cent. However, the total is down slightly from 66.1 per cent in 2024, 68.3 per cent in 2023 and 70.7 per cent in 2022.

Speaking about the findings, Barbara Kolosinska, Co-Owner and Managing Director at C&M Travel Recruitment (http://www.candm.co.uk/), said: "To see that the gap has actually widened for the second year in a row is hugely disappointing.

"We should stress that at most of levels of our industry, we have not seen any evidence of a wide pay gap between male and female colleagues working alongside each other in comparable roles.

"The issue is a broader one, in that women are increasingly being placed in the majority of the travel industry's lowest paying jobs, while men are being awarded more and more of the top positions in our industry."