Travel, Hospitality & Leisure

Navigating through disruption and transformation

After a tumultuous period in the travel industry's history subject to frequent fluctuations, every company has been forced to rethink its approach to the future – for both its guests and its employees.

That future is more uncertain than ever, and travel, hospitality and leisure companies need leaders to navigate this complexity. But finding that talent is harder and more competitive than ever.

Korn Ferry’s travel, hospitality and leisure consulting services are uniquely suited to help companies thrive amidst the talent-related challenges being faced today. Our travel, hospitality and leisure practice is a specialty boutique within the global Korn Ferry network. We’ve conducted more senior-level C-suite searches in the travel industry than all of our competitors combined.

Our dedicated, experienced consultants have real-world, functional experience and knowledge in the travel, hospitality and leisure domain. That means we have a deep understanding of the talent, processes and organizational structures you need to get ahead. And with our name recognition in the market, we can help you attract diverse candidates ready to lead your organization.

What we do

Travel, hospitality and leisure organizations have to constantly raise their game to serve their customers. That’s why leading hotels, resorts, casinos, cruise lines and restaurant and food service companies turn to us for talent-related sourcing, strategy and advice.

Our travel, hospitality and leisure consultants can help you attract, develop and retain best-in-class talent for your organization. Adjusting to constant disruptions in the market requires an agile pipeline of leadership talent ready to seize the opportunities that change presents. We work with you to assess and address the full spectrum of your talent-related needs. We help your leaders become even more effective. And we support culture transformation to improve your ability to serve your customers, employees and stakeholders.

Where we can help

Your performance and results are what matters. We partner with you continually evolve and optimize to reflect your changing needs. We have helped our travel, hospitality and leisure clients address the following challenges.

Recruiting talent in a highly competitive market

The market for talent has never been tighter. That means competition to recruit top talent is higher than ever. And when employees have their pick of jobs, it can be difficult to convince them to join an industry that’s struggled over the last few years.

Our experienced hospitality consultants will help you create a wide net, fueled by advanced AI sourcing tools, to overcome today’s talent shortage. Our networks run deep. We mine our resources and give you access to the more than 1 million candidates in our proprietary database. We also use our connections that span the lodging, gaming/casino, real estate, restaurant and broader leisure space to find the best talent.

Embedding diversity, equity and inclusion throughout your organization

The most effective companies are led by diverse teams. But too few companies in the travel, hospitality and leisure industry reflect the people they serve. Even fewer have diversity and inclusion programs that are designed to create sustainable progress toward equity.

At Korn Ferry, it’s important for us to walk the talk. That’s why we have one of the most diverse consulting teams in the business, and a large breadth of experience placing diverse leadership.

We help you build programs designed to unlock the power of all of your employees. We study your practices and processes to unearth potential biases and inequities. We analyze how your organization measures up against our DE&I maturity benchmarks. And we help you build more inclusive structures, reinforced with training, to help you reach your goals.

Understanding your people’s potential

The best talent is often hidden in your organization. But unless you realize what drives them and how to optimize their performance, your people may never reach their full potential. As a result, they may be disengaged, and you’ll lose opportunities to help them advance in your organization.

Our proprietary tools and technology will help you find the next generation of travel, hospitality and leisure leadership. We can create a success profile that shows you whether you’ve got the talent you need for the future. Our assessments will help you find talent that matches the attributes you need for particular functions and challenges.

The result? Better talent acquisition and management decisions, so you can figure out how to develop, redeploy and recruit and optimize your people resources.

Developing your people for the future

With so much unknown in the travel industry, it’s hard to know whether you have the right talent to lead your organization into the future. But one thing is for certain: the talent you recruited 5 years ago may not have the capabilities you will need 5 years from now. Closing that gap can be done in a variety of ways.

Our travel, hospitality and leisure consultants can help you develop your next generation of leaders with customized, high-impact learning journeys. We ensure your development program prepares your people for the unknown by unearthing skillset and mindset gaps. Then we personalize learning to individual preferences and offer learning experiences to upskill and reskill your teams to prepare them for the future.

Putting people and purpose at the heart of your transformation

The travel and hospitality industry has been through a remarkable period of disruption. Dramatic shifts in customer, employee, stakeholder and society expectations mean that organizations need more agility, inclusion and innovation than ever before. Those shifts mandate changes in organizational structure, culture and performance to engage your people and drive growth.

We help you create a blueprint for your organization based on data-driven insights from our analytics platform and guide you through the design of new systems and ways of working. We drive cultural shifts and align your organizational capabilities and structure with your business strategy. And we design, analyze and measure jobs to optimize how you work.

Let us be part of your success story. Contact us and start your journey toward transformation.