With @ABTAMembers warning about a tsunami of job losses in last week's @travelweekly I've been looking at data on jobs in the UK travel sector. I thought it was worth a thread (it's my first attempt at a Twitter thread, so bear with me!)

First thing to say is that all the data I've got is from the Office for National Statistics, which collects this data annually from businesses in the UK. I get sector demographic data as part of the annual @travolution analysis into technology spend in UK travel.

The ONS applies various definitions which we have to work with. It divides the travel sector into five sub-sectors: Travel Agents, Tour Operators, Passenger Air Transport, Passenger Water Transport, and Hotels. Some firms we consider to be in the sector may not fall into these.

It also divides companies into five size categories as measured by the number of staff employed by those firms. So we can see the data for businesses with 1-9 staff, 10-49 staff, 50-99 staff, 100-999 staff and 1,000+ staff. I have data going back a decade but will focus on 2019.

First up, here are some UK travel sector headline stats. The industry employs 570,343 people, or did in 2019, working in 17,430 companies. Of that, overall travel sector employee number, 364,118 (64%) work for the largest firms with 100+ staff.

Conversely, firms with 1-9 staff represent 64% of the total number of businesses in the sector and firms with under 50 staff represent 90% of the total. There are only 50 firms with 1,000+ staff.

Now let's look at sector specific data. The total number of people employed by Travel Agents in 2019 was 59,808, which is 10.5% of the total in travel and the total number of businesses was 4,570, just over a quarter (26.2%) of the total in travel.

The Travel Agent sector is dominated by small and micro businesses with 1-9 staff. There were 4,115 of these accounting for 90% of the total. Firms with 100+ staff (65) account for just 1.4% of companies, but 66% of the workforce (39,949). 16% are firms with 1-9 staff.

The Tour Operator sector is smaller with 23,445 staff and 1,965 firms but has a similar demographic pattern. Businesses with 1-9 staff represent 80% of the total (1,570) and 17% of employees (4,004). For firms with 100+ staff it's 2.3% (45 companies) and 38% (9,006 staff).

Given the distinction between Travel Agents and Tour Operators is in reality not clear and increasingly blurred, it's probably more useful to combine them to give us an idea of the size of what @travelweekly refers to as the 'trade'. This will include the likes of Tui and Jet2.

So, the 83,254 people employed by the 'trade' (Travel Agents and Tour Operators combined) is 14.6% of the total, and the 6,535 businesses are 37.5% of the total in travel.

The smallest businesses in the 'trade' (1-9 staff) represent 87% of the total number of companies (5,685) while for the largest (100+ staff) that figure is 1.7% (110 companies) but these firms employ 59% of the people (48,955) to just 16.5% for the smallest firms (13,743).

When considering employment in travel, the Hotel sector is the giant. It employs 399,299 people, or 70% of travel's total but just 57% of the number of businesses. This is obviously due to the nature of hotels needing people to do lots of jobs that can't be done by computers.

However, Hotel sector turnover in 2019 was £24.19 billion while Travel Agent turnover was higher at £25.34 billion and Tour Operator turnover added £9.89 billion to the 'trade' total of £33.43 billion.

Travel Agent and Tour Operator sector turnover has increased 80% and 87% respectively since 2010 which is pretty remarkable and must reflect the growing appetite for travel among the UK public whether for business or pleasure, or both.

I don't have data on the economic impact of the Passenger Air Transport sector but it's likely to be substantial and larger than any other travel sector. Airport terminal passenger numbers stood at 295.9 million in 2019 according to CAA figures.

So what does this tell us? Firstly, if you want to save jobs in travel government support aimed at the largest firms may have the biggest impact in terms of sheer numbers. So, to retain its diversity and maintain competition the sector has to make a strong case for help for SMEs.

The 'trade', which covers an outbound sector traditionally overlooked and little understood by government, needs to emphasise those turnover figures or else any sector support may be directed at a Hotel sector that supports a lot of jobs and doesn't take money out of the country.

Equally, it has to make the economic case against an aviation sector that is also in massive crisis, with huge losses being reported by airlines and airports, and that has the most powerful lobbying voice in government.

Clearly travel remains one of the sectors most directly and hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and as such has a good case for sector specific support, although it is certainly not alone in arguing its case for special assistance.

When that case is put it will be vital to understand the structure of the sector, and where and how that support could be targeted, in the way the government itself sees things when it looks at its stats. I'm sure there are other conclusions that haven't occurred to me.

Just realised I should have indicated how many tweets were in this thread and where you’d got to on each one, so well done for getting this far!