3:1 ratio of women to men

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8/11/2006

3:1 ratio of women to men
Melissa Hadley

omen continue to dominate the retail travel industry, with nearly three times more workers than men.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show more than 12,500 female employees in retail travel agencies compared with 4797 men.

InPlace Recruitment director Sandra Chiles said this reflected the large number of women working on the “frontline” compared with men, who usually worked as middle or upper managers or business owners in the travel industry.

“Women are very good in service industries; they are very customer focused and have an empathy with people.”

The study also shows the number of people working in retail travel has risen slightly since 1997, with more than 17,500 workers in 2004 compared with 16,500.

“Agencies have gone from the traditional one or two employees, usually an owner-operator with one or two staff, to maybe five or six staff because the number of agencies that have consolidated has increased,” she said.

“It’s very interesting considering the dramatic global and Australian changes in the travel industry over the years, that even though there are less travel agencies there are more people, so they have been absorbed,” Chiles added.

“It’s a great promotion for why young people should come into the industry when you look at the numbers.”

The number of working proprietors in retail travel has almost halved in the past 10 years, with just over 800 running and working in their own agencies compared with more than 1600 in 1997.

Chiles said she had seen a trend emerge since 2001 of agency proprietors taking on more than one shop.

“After the collapse of Traveland, managers were asked to purchase more than one (agency),” she said.

“So one person might have ended up with three.”

According to the ABS figures, the retail sector is dominated by small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with 90 per cent of travel agencies operating with less than 10 employees.

The statistics show 70 per cent of retail businesses (1677) employ four people or less, while 20.8 per cent (498) employ between five and nine staff members.

Just 6.4 per cent of agencies (153) have 10 to 19 employees and 2 per cent (48) of agencies employ between 20 and 49 workers.

The smallest percentages go to the 11 agencies with 50 to 99 employees, or 0.5 per cent, and the nine agencies with more than 100 employees, or 0.4 per cent of travel agencies in Australia.

8 November 2006

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