Booking.com launches ‘Women in Tech’ program

As an industry that’s around 75 per cent women, travel has some great initiatives to help encourage female leadership.

Which is why at Travel Weekly, along with our Women in Travel Awards, we’re also supporting events like Changing the Ratio to promote inclusion, diversity and the promotion of women in all industries.

It’s also why we yell the lyrics to Run the World (Girls) by Beyonce on a regular basis, disrupting the whole office and creating powerful enemies.

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But that’s enough self-promotion for now.

As the travel industry becomes increasingly intertwined with the technology industry, the stark under-representation of women in tech becomes increasingly obvious.

Booking.com, one of the world’s largest travel e-commerce companies, has announced a global partnership with Web Summit to host a dedicated ‘Women in Tech’ networking and mentoring program at the flagship Web Summit event.

This collab aims to redress the under-representation of women in technology by creating more opportunities for women to enter, advance and thrive in the sector.

Booking.com will host the first of a number of networking initiatives for women at the Booking.com Women in Tech lounge at Collision 2018, being held in New Orleans, USA, from April 30th-May 3rd, 2018.

Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans will also participate in a panel on “Sustainability in Big Business”, sharing her insights on the role of major companies in furthering global sustainability and ethical practices.

Web Summit 2018, will be the focal point of the global partnership and will feature an expanded ‘Women in Tech Mentor Program’, following the success of the inaugural initiative at last year’s event.

“Recent data suggests that 90 per cent of women working in technology across the world have experienced gender bias in the workplace and this, coupled with the lack of mentors (48 per cent) and female role models (42 per cent), are the top three obstacles preventing women from choosing to advance their careers in tech,” said Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com.

“This global partnership will give us another platform to help pivot gender inequalities and gaps in the male-dominated tech workplace and encourage more women from across the world to become positive role models for others.”

“We launched our women in tech initiative three years ago to increase the number of women participating at our events around the world,” Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and co-founder of Web Summit, said.

“This commitment to change resulted in a female/male gender ratio at Web Summit of 42 per cent/ 58 per cent for the last two years.”

“The partnership with Booking.com will help us provide further opportunities for female tech talent attending our events to network with and learn from some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs in the industry today.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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