Global Opportunity Youth in the Travel & Tourism Sector

Young people around the world are facing joint and daunting crises of global unemployment and the COVID-19 pandemic. As of 2018, over 350 million young people aged 15-29 were “Opportunity Youth” (OY) – out of work, out of school or training, or in unstable and sometimes unsafe informal work.The pandemic has exacerbated the global youth employment crisis by forcing business closures and job furloughs worldwide. This has taken a high toll on the informal, gig, and entry-level opportunities that tend to align to OY skills, undoubtedly increasing the global OY population.

For a number of reasons, the global Travel and Tourism (T&T) sector could be a meaningful pipeline to connect OY to opportunity – prior to 2020, it employed a significant and increasing number of young people. However, T&T has been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic and even prior to that, there has been little clear or comprehensive guidance on how to address the challenges hindering more OY around the world from accessing opportunities in T&T. This is yet more urgent given the onset of COVID-19 and the T&T uncertainty it has created worldwide. With generous support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN) explores those challenges and considers potential approaches to addressing them in this landscape report on the potential for and issues around youth workforce development in the T&T sector.