By Tessa Robertson, a Senior Leisure Travel Recruitment Consultant at Ambitions Travel Recruitment, placing leisure travel professionals across the UK, South Africa, and North America.
In travel recruitment, you see patterns repeat. Counter offers are one of them.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s July 2026 poll of leisure travel professionals, 51% said they would never accept a counter offer, and a further 15% said they had accepted one before and it did not work.
Only 6% said yes, absolutely. Another 28% said yes, but with reservations.
Add those two numbers together, and the picture is clear. Two out of every three leisure travel professionals we asked have either ruled out a counter offer entirely or tried one and watched it fail.
What the Poll Data Actually Shows
Ambitions Travel Recruitment asked their leisure travel professional followers a direct question: If you handed in your notice and your employer came back with more money, would you accept it and stay? Here is what they said.
Why Counter Offers Rarely Solve the Real Problem
A counter offer answers one question: can the employer afford to pay more? It does not answer the question that actually prompted the resignation. Progression that was not happening, a workload that was not sustainable, a manager relationship that was not working, a flexibility arrangement that did not exist- none of that changes because a number on a payslip did.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment – Market Insight: When a candidate who accepted a counter offer comes back to the market, the story is almost always the same. The salary increase came through. The promises were made. But the underlying reasons they wanted to leave in the first place never changed.
The 15% Who Already Know How This Ends
Fifteen per cent of the leisure travel professionals we polled have accepted a counter offer before and watched it fail. That is not a small group, and it is instructive. These are professionals who gave the relationship a second chance, on improved terms, and still ended up back on the market, usually within twelve months of accepting. They are the clearest evidence available that a counter offer buys time, and rarely much more than that.
What the Comments Confirmed
When Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s team and network responded to the poll, the same theme came through from almost every angle.
From our Founder: Fi Morrison-Arnthal, Founder and Managing Director of Ambitions Travel Recruitment, has seen this pattern from both sides. Only last week, she placed a candidate who had turned down an offer a year earlier; the promises behind their counter offer never materialised, and they came back to make the move they had originally turned down. She has also been on the receiving end of it herself: early in her career at Lunn Poly, a counter offer was made, and the changes it promised never came through. She was fortunate that the company that had originally approached her had kept the door open.
Our Team’s View
Claire Castro, Business and Brand Development Manager: A pay increase is rarely enough to suddenly make someone happy in a role. If you are keen to leave a business, it is normally for a deeper reason.
Claudette Gouws, Operations Executive: A counter offer often fixes the symptom, not the reason someone wanted to leave in the first place.
Leisure travel professionals in our wider network said much the same. Lisa-Marie Williams, a director in aviation and events, said she has never left a job over salary; it has always been unhappiness, feeling undervalued, a lack of progression, or poor management, none of which a counter offer would have fixed. Marc Leventhal of Celestyal Cruises put it more simply: “Once you have committed to a new role, turning back would be unprofessional.”
Not every response fell neatly into ‘never’. Chaya B., founder of Zohara Atelier, made the case that a market-related counter offer would have kept her in role — twice. Her point, drawn from experience, was less about the counter offer moment itself and more about the gap that leads to it: skilled people repeatedly given wider responsibility without it being reflected in pay. For her, retention is not a single conversation at resignation. It is ongoing alignment between responsibility, contribution, and fair market value, the same argument Ambitions Travel Recruitment makes in its Beyond Salary Blog.
What a Counter Offer Signals to a Candidate
The timing of a counter offer is itself a piece of information. An employer who only addresses pay, progression, or workload once someone has handed in their notice is confirming something the candidate may already have suspected: that recognition was available all along and simply was not offered until leaving became the alternative. For many leisure travel professionals, that signal is harder to walk back than the salary increase is to accept.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s View: The employers who retain the best leisure travel talent are not the ones who respond well to resignations. They are the ones who never let a resignation become the first real conversation about what someone needs in order to stay.
What This Means for Employers
If a counter offer is part of your retention strategy, the data suggests you are relying on the 34% who would consider one, and even within that group, a meaningful share will still leave within the year. The more durable approach is addressing retention before the resignation letter arrives: regular conversations about progression, workload, and flexibility, not a once-a-year salary review prompted by someone else’s job offer. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s Beyond Salary and Why People Really Leave blogs set out what leisure travel professionals are actually looking for, and a counter offer, by its nature, arrives too late to address most of it.
What This Means If You Are Considering Resigning
If you are weighing up a resignation and expecting a counter offer, it is worth deciding in advance what would actually change your mind, and being honest with yourself about whether a salary adjustment alone meets that bar. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s poll suggests most leisure travel professionals already know the answer is no. If you decide to go ahead, how you resign matters. We have put together a free guide to resigning professionally in the travel industry, covering notice periods, handover planning, and how to handle a counter offer if one comes — available to download from our website.
Free download: The Ultimate Guide to Resignations — Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s free guide
The Takeaway
66% of leisure travel professionals would refuse a counter offer outright or have already tried one and found it did not work. A counter offer can buy an employer time. It is very rarely the fix it is treated as.
Related reading
Beyond Salary: What Leisure Travel Professionals Actually Want From Their Employer | Why Leisure Travel Professionals Really Leave Their Jobs — and Why Retention IS Attraction | If You’re Only Advertising Vacancies, You’re Missing Most of the Leisure Travel Talent Market
Frequently Asked Questions About Counter Offers in the Travel Industry
A counter offer is when an employer responds to an employee’s resignation by offering more money, a promotion, or improved terms in an attempt to persuade them to stay. In Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s July 2026 poll of leisure travel professionals, 51% said they would never accept one.
Employers usually make counter offers because losing the person would be disruptive or expensive to replace, not because they had already planned to recognise that person’s value. The timing is the problem. Acting only once someone has resigned tells the employee that recognition was always available — it was simply never offered.
Rarely, and the data backs this up. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s July 2026 poll found that 66% of leisure travel professionals would either never accept a counter offer or had accepted one before and found it did not work. A significant number of candidates who accept a counter offer return to the market within twelve months, because the salary changed but the underlying reasons they wanted to leave did not.
Address retention before a resignation letter is on the table. That means regular, honest conversations about career progression, workload, and flexibility, not just salary benchmarking once a year. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s Beyond Salary and Why People Really Leave pillars set out what leisure travel professionals are actually looking for, and a counter offer rarely touches any of it.
Treat it with caution. A counter offer answers the immediate financial gap, but it rarely answers the reasons you started looking in the first place, whether that is progression, culture, workload, or how you are managed day to day. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s July 2026 poll found that only 6% of leisure travel professionals would accept a counter offer without reservations.
Many find that the change does not last. The salary increase comes through and the promises are made, but the working relationship is the same one that prompted the resignation in the first place. A significant number of candidates who accept a counter offer are back in the market within twelve months, looking for the same things they were looking for the first time.
Keep it factual, brief, and forward-looking, confirm your last working day, offer a proper handover, and avoid using the conversation to relitigate why you are leaving. Ambitions Travel Recruitment has put together a free guide to resigning professionally in the travel industry, available to download from our website, covering notice periods, handover planning, and how to handle a counter offer if one comes.
