The internet is key to travel and transport companies,
with a survey from travel market research specialist PhoCusWright
predicting that 40% of all types of travel will be booked online by
the end of 2008.
Travel and transport companies are, therefore, recruiting
heavily for e-commerce skills, with a big emphasis on user
interface design and testing, as well as pure coding skills in
technologies such as .net, says Chris Price, a senior consultant in
the IT division of recruitment firm Capita Resourcing.
With this emphasis on e-commerce, the travel sector holds
opportunities for IT staff who are comfortable spending most of
their time working in the business, and who can pick up commercial
skills and offer technical expertise.
Working for a travel agent: Opodo
Opodo, an online travel agent operating in nine European
countries, has gone so far as to embed a developer in the heart of
its marketing team.
"Traditionally we have had a clean split between the IT and
commerce teams. Although we had a really good IT team, we had to
formally ask for and justify each piece of work.
"Now we just ask the question of our developer and he can tell
us whether or not it can be done. So we can build or change pages
very quickly, and exploit new approaches, such as the map-based
interface for presenting search results on our new Escape Map
service, without having to wait on the IT team," says Paul Treanor,
Opodo's UK marketing manager.
As a result, Opodo has significantly improved its
browser-to-user conversion rate - doubling its performance on some
pages, says Treanor.
"It has been difficult to take someone who is a pure developer
and turn them into a marketing person, and as marketers we have had
to pick up some understanding of what can be developed as well, but
when we look at the successes we have had, it has been worth it,
"he says.
Rudolf Horvath, who has been commercial developer for Opodo in
the UK for eight months, says the role is "less about pure
development and more about being a marketeer".
Horvath had previously worked for a small web consultancy
developing sites for a broad client base. That gave him experience
in a range of web development technologies, database management and
server management skills. Since working at Opodo he has developed
his soft skills, with both formal and informal training from
colleagues on marketing skills.
Despite this trend for IT staff to move into more
commercially-focused roles in the business, there is still a place
for traditional IT skills as the sector focuses on consolidation
and mergers and acquisitions, says Price. "That is giving rise to
lots of opportunities in IT to migrate data and back-office systems
and to consolidate onto a single infrastructure.
"These sectors are also looking for experienced programme and
project managers to oversee both consolidation and new developments
to trial the latest technologies."
Price also sees a regular flow of requests for support staff
capable of delivering 100% uptime, and for security specialists.
Database skills are in demand to manage large volumes of
information coming from multiple partners.
Working for Transport for London
Tayo Oseni-Alexis, who works at
Transport for London (TfL), also works from within the
marketing department rather than the IT department.
As development manager for TfL's journey planner, travel alerts
and mobile services, she is responsible for managing systems that
gather timetable and current service information from all the
different transport providers and deliver them to users via the
web, Wap and SMS.
She says one downside of working in transport is that you need
to be extremely political. "You have to understand the various
stakeholders, their needs and drivers and work within that
environment without allowing it to affect your decisions and
ability to deliver.
"Different parts of the sector can be quite myopic in focusing
just on their own mode of transport, so you have to work hard with
stakeholders internally and externally to encourage them to be
involved in an integrated way."
Oseni-Alexis started with TfL as a data analyst after completing
bachelor and masters degrees as a mature student, having previously
worked in the charity sector.
She has worked her way up through team leader and project
manager roles to her current position, where she manages more than
20 concurrent projects and has significant input into business
strategy. Her remit encompasses projects ranging from new releases
of existing services, to overhauling the infrastructure for TfL's
mobile services to allow any TfL business unit to "plug in" its
mobile applications.
Oseni-Alexis says TfL has been supportive of her career
development and - judging her experiences against colleagues in
other sectors - she thinks transport companies compare favourably
with other industries when it comes to training.
On the subject of salaries, Price says that although salaries do
not compare favourably to the highest-paid sectors, such as
finance, roles in travel and transport often come with perks, such
as generous holiday allowances and heavily discounted tickets that
can be transferred to family and friends.