Best Career Options after BA in Travel and Tourism

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If you live travel, breathe travel, and eat travel; then you might as well study travel. That must have been your line of thought when you decided to get a bachelors degree in travel and tourism management.

But if you have been scouring the internet looking for job options after completing this degree, then you would realize that there’s not enough material on the internet to solve this query of yours.

That’s what we realized too. And thus we took the onus of creating an exhaustive list of career options after a BA in Travel and Tourism Management that also gave information about salaries and job profiles. Here’s how it turned out:

Catering Supervisor   

A great option for BA in Travel and Tourism students right now is to become a Catering Supervisor. Demand had been steadily increasing since the early 2000s, and has skyrocketed recently. And supply has not risen in proportional way, at least not yet. If you remember even a little-bit of high school economics, you would be jumping in joy because it means that your pay has just ballooned up.

What Catering Supervisor actually do is this – The job of a Catering Supervisor is to plan and coordinate all aspects of catering. They arrange meetings with clients to discuss what food they want in the event. They manage and supervise service activities, sanitation and financial responsibilities.

They are completely involved with management and staff; and ensure the pricing is cost effective and can generate positive revenue from the various events conducted. Pretty simple, right? Well, not really. Your organization would require you to put a lot of attention in this, because even one slight mistake can cost them a lot.

Work–life balance is okay, and you may need to put in a couple of hours of “overtime” every so often. Starting salaries are around 3-5 lacs, but as always, a lot depends upon your individual skills, the size of the organization, as well as the location where you are working.

So, don’t come at me with pitchforks if your salary does not fall in this range. Monetary growth happens very quickly in this industry. Once you have some experience behind your name, you are golden. 

Cabin Crew   

Becoming a Cabin Crew may seem like risky business to you, and you would not be very wrong in thinking so. There is no organized way to get into this field, and most of the hiring happens through connections and networking. But once you get in, being part of the cabin crew is one of the most rewarding professions out there.  

As a member of the cabin crew, your main work would be to give excellent customer service to passengers. They have to ensure passenger comfort and safety throughout the course of flight. They go through rigorous training and customer dealing classes before they go onboard.

Crew members are taught to deal with security and emergency situations that may arise during the flight and can administer first aid to passengers. 

Apart from this, you may be expected to oversee a few more things here and there, depending on who you are working for. The work is super-exciting, especially if you are into the management aspects of travel.   

Growth in this industry, like many others, is directly proportional to your skills. The better you are, the more you’re paid. Period. Anyone who says that this is wrong is lying. Although predicting starting salaries is next to impossible in this line of work, here’s a number that will get you get excited – 4-5 lacs per annum. 

Hospitality Executive   

As a BA Travel and Tourism Management graduate, you will (we hope) be well-versed with the tourism sector and all the different intricacies around this subject. So how about you do something that actually uses all that information stored inside your brain. Nice idea? Yeah, we thought so.  

Becoming a Hospitality Executive is just about the perfect way to do that. In simple words, Hospitality Executives are the ones who possess skills of leadership, team work, communication, decision making and problem-solving in order to carry out their tasks. They are in-charge of overseeing operations of hospitality in hotels, resorts, lodges or restaurants.

These positions demand some industry experience and also some management experience. These managers, whether they work at hotels or restaurants, always have to focus on providing excellent customer experience. 

Is there any other job that is more suitable for a fresh travel and tourism graduate? If it exists, we don’t know about it. Which is highly unlikely, because if you haven’t noticed, we are a website about careers.  

In the beginning of your career, you can expect to earn about anywhere between 5-7 lacs. And as you get more experience behind your name, this number is only going to become bigger and bigger. Freelancing can also be done in this line of work, which can further increase your income if you do it on the side.  

Some of the top organizations that hire Hospitality Executive are usually hotels and travel agencies.

What are you waiting for? Start approaching the HR people of these companies on LinkedIn, and who knows, you may just strike gold. 

Catering Manager   

Not satisfied by the various career options we talked about? Well, how about becoming a Catering Manager? You will get good pay, be involved with interesting work, and the potential for career growth is enormous.  

Catering managers monitor and check the quality of food and service where they are assigned for catering. They making sure that their outlets perform well and stay up to the expected standard. The most important part of a Catering Manager’s job is to achieve superior quality within a limited budget and maintain high standards of hygiene, appraisal and customer satisfaction.

Apart from this, some other work that you may be required to perform as a catering manager is management of people, internal operations and so on. The work is challenging and rewarding at the same time, which makes for a deadly combination if you ask us.  

Growth and leadership opportunities may be slightly difficult to grab in the beginning, but if you stick with it, you will definitely be rewarded with more responsibilities (and more importantly, better pay). Work-life balance can be a bit absurd at times, but it’s not something that you can’t manage after proper communication with your seniors.  

Salaries start around 3-5 lacs, and monetary growth happens very quickly. You can very easily expect your starting salary to double within a few years. With time, your work profile will change, and your daily work will stop being about the nitty-gritty of things, and more about the general overview and high-level strategization (is that even a word?) for the future of your organisation. 

Sales Executive   

If you’re unsure about all the above given options, then Sales Executive may be the right fit for you. Lately the demand has been rising like crazy and now would be the perfect time to get into the job market for this field. If you have opened LinkedIn lately, you would have definitely seen that it is filled with employers asking for Sales Executives.  

Okay, great. But what does a Sales Executive actually do? Here’s the answer.  

They are the key points of contact between any organization and its clients. They have numerous jobs to perform which include answering queries, giving advice and introducing new products and services. Their work also includes organizing sales visits and planning future sales trajectory of the organization.

Sometimes your responsibilities may be more or less, but in essence, it all boils down to selling stuff. So if you think that you would enjoy doing that, then becoming a Sales Executive might just be your best option.  

Let’s get to the juicy part. Starting salaries are in the range of 2-4 lacs, but the earning potential is sky-high. And keep in mind that this is an average estimate, and your salary would be more than this if you live in a major town or a tier-1 city.  

Leadership opportunities are available with time, and the potential for career growth is phenomenal. Sounds amazing, right?


So these were some of the highest-paying professions that you can go for after completing a B.A. in Travel and Tourism management. Did you like the article and found it informative? Then please share it with fellow hospitality students so that they can make well-informed decisions about their professional life. Subscribe to our newsletter to get a weekly update about the different career options added on the website.

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