Ethnic diversity in hospitality ‘lacking at board level’

A report from WiHTL has concluded that more than half of hospitality travel, leisure and retail businesses in the UK lack ethnic diversity at board level.

The report, called ‘Maintaining Momentum’ by Diversity in Retail (DiR), the diversity and inclusion organisation WiHTL, in partnership with the MBS Group, also stated that progress in gender diversity is too slow. At the current rate of progress in hospitality, travel and leisure (HTL) it would take more than 11 years to reach gender parity across the top three leadership levels.

According to the report, 50% of HTL companies state D&I is a top five priority, while 89% claim to have a co-ordinated D&I strategy, with topics such as age, disability, menopause and transgender rights moving up the agenda, alongside race, ethnicity and gender.

Across multi-site operations businesses, data collection efforts have developed in the past 12 months, with 76% of HTL companies collecting data on the diversity of their businesses.

The report, which was launched at the Inclusion Summit in London this week, also supports previous research stating that more than a third of retail businesses in the UK have no ethnic diversity at board level.

Founder and chair of WiHTL and DiR Tea Colaianni said: “Our research clearly illustrates that while we are making progress, we still have work to do. Bringing together leaders across over 100 companies to facilitate this discussion and indeed maintain, if not increase, momentum of change in this area is exactly why we are holding this year’s summit.”