After a year of consolidation, the travel sector has been flooded with jobseekers, resulting in fewer candidate shortages, apart from in web-based travel roles. But despite business travel recruitment grinding to a halt, recruiters are protecting their margins and are even seeing early signs of brighter skies ahead.

“Widespread capacity cuts in the industry over the past two years have gone a long way to ensuring that there is a much better supply and demand fit,” an Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) spokesman told Recruiter.

And following a year in which tour operator XL disappeared altogether, Angus Chisholm, managing director at travel recruiter C&M, told Recruiter that cuts in capacity have ensured that travel businesses are more profitable.

“The industry has been looking at itself for the past few years, around capacity, sales and holidays,” he said. “Firms have been merging, as with Thomas Cook, First Choice and TUI Travel, and have cut capacity quite dramatically, and increased their profitability on the holidays sold.”

Chisholm adds that while recruitment has been down 55% on last year, the staffing firm was sticking to its guns on margins. “It has been tough. Some recruiters are not as confident about their service and are looking to win business on price only. We are confident that our service is worth a certain value and we’ve been working hard to maintain our margins. That is good practice in any market. It has been challenging in the past six to eight months.”

The reason why margins are tough to maintain may lie in the abundance of reservations agents, travel consultants and marketing staff on the market right now. Jason Blayne, director at T&T Recruit Solutions, said: “There is no candidate shortage across the board. If you are a marketer and you have got a pretty good CV, there are three or four companies that are recruiting but the competition is enormous.”

Speaking at People 1st’s release of its ‘State of the Nation Report 2009’, the Sector Skills Council for the hospitality, travel and tourism industries, Barbara Follett, minister for culture, creative industries and tourism, said: “A holiday is an experience that people have paid for and you need good staff to deliver that.”

But as travellers opt for the ease of booking holidays online, web analysts and SEO specialists continue to be in short supply, and the UK’s beleagured banking sector has proven to be a good source of candidates, according to Ian Brooks, director at Gail Kenny Executive Search: “We can find these candidates in financial services sector. They are used to working at the highest level and are far more readily available.”

But the travel sector has also felt the fall-out from the collapse of the banks as business travel has taken a battering, according to Claire Muge, area manager and West Midlands account manager at Travel Trade Recruitment.

“Business travel has been the hardest hit by far of all the sectors and in our experience has seen the most redundancies and the least new vacancies of the past six months,” she said. “There are a few companies still recruiting for business travel consultants, but the tendency is towards offering contract positions or temp positions, with some going permanent if business remains steady.”

However, the sector could be about to take off once more, evident in the seasonal upturn in demand, with Monster’s Employment Index recording a reading of 124 for April, up slightly from 123 in March and a low of 115 in January.

Chisholm said that he had noticed an increase in sales over the past two months since the start of the year. “We’re up in April and May. That could be put down to our increased focus and improved performance internally and the market stabilising.

“The market has stopped declining. Things are a little bit better than they were at the start of the year. There is more positivity in the environment. A lot of the changes have now been made with redundancies and natural attrition has carried on.”