By Lisa Harding, Senior Travel Recruitment Consultant at Ambitions Travel Recruitment, placing leisure travel professionals across the UK, South Africa, and North America.
In Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s June 2026 poll of leisure travel professionals,
- 98% said they would respond to a headhunter even when happy in their current role.
- Only 2% said no.
If your talent strategy begins and ends with job adverts, you are missing a huge part of the market that would still engage in the right conversation.
That is not a knock on job advertising. Adverts have a role. But in leisure travel, a sector where the specialists who could genuinely change your business are almost never actively looking, advertising alone is not a talent strategy. It is a way of reaching the smallest and most available slice of the market.
The tailor-made travel consultant with a decade of product expertise and a loyal client following is not watching job boards. The ski specialist with deep operator relationships built over years is not updating their CV. The UHNW concierge advisor, whose discretion and client trust have made them irreplaceable, is not applying for roles. They are working. And according to Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s poll data, 97% of them would take a call from the right recruiter.
In Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s June 2026 poll of leisure travel professionals, 98% said they would respond to a Head Hunter even when happy. If your vacancy is only visible on a job board, you are not in front of them.
Who Is Actually Responding to Your Job Advert?
When a leisure travel business posts a vacancy, it reaches a specific group: people who are actively looking. In any given week, that is a minority of the total talent pool. Research from LinkedIn consistently shows that only around 25% of the working population is actively seeking a new role at any one time. In leisure travel, a sector where specialist professionals tend to build loyalty over years and move carefully when they do, the actively looking pool is smaller still.
That pool is also, on average, more junior and less experienced than the passive majority. The most accomplished travel professionals, the destination specialists, tailor-made consultants, and senior product managers who would represent a genuine upgrade to your team, are rarely in it. They leave roles when something compelling arrives, not because they are watching for vacancies.
This does not make them unreachable. It makes them unreachable by advertising.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment – Market Insight: The candidates we are asked to find most often are the ones employers cannot find themselves. Not because they do not exist, but because they are not looking. They are in roles, performing well, and invisible to any search that starts and ends with a job advert. They are not invisible to us.
What the Poll Data Actually Shows
Ambitions Travel Recruitment asked their leisure travel professional followers a direct question: Would you respond to a Head Hunter if you were happy where you are? Here is what they said.
Source: Ambitions Travel Recruitment LinkedIn poll of leisure travel professionals, June 2026.
Read those numbers as a talent market. A job advert, on a good day, reaches the people who were already looking, a fraction of the market. A Headhunter with the right relationships reaches the 63% who are always open, the 27% who would consider the right opportunity, and the 8% who want to be on someone’s radar. That is 98% of the best talent in leisure travel. Accessible. Available for a conversation. Not available to an advert.
Ambition Travel Recruitment’s View: The employers who find the best leisure travel talent consistently are not the ones with the most visible job adverts. They are the ones whose roles are presented, personally, to professionals who were not looking — by a recruiter who already knows both parties. That is how the placements that make a real difference happen.
Why Does the Best Talent Rarely Apply?
The most valuable professionals in leisure travel, the consultants, specialists, and managers who are genuinely hard to replace, share a common characteristic. They have not needed to apply for a role in years.
Their career has moved through relationships, recommendations, and approaches. A lot of the conversations we have with travel professionals are not about moving immediately. They are about building relationships and understanding what would genuinely make someone consider a move in future, so when the right opportunity comes up, the conversation is actually relevant.
This means they are not practised at job-searching. More importantly, they are not motivated by it. They are not watching job boards because no job board has ever shown them something better than what they already have. What changes their thinking is a conversation with someone who understands their sector, knows their value, and has something genuinely worth hearing about.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s poll found that 8% of leisure travel professionals said they would respond to a Headhunter specifically to get on their radar, not because they want to move, but because they understand the value of being known by the right people before they need to be. These are professionals who are managing their careers with intention. An advert will never reach them, because they will never see it.
The 63%: Always Open
The largest group in Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s poll, 63%, said they are always open to a conversation. This is not restlessness. It is professionalism. Experienced leisure travel specialists know that careers are built over decades, that the right role does not advertise itself, and that the relationship with a trusted recruiter is worth maintaining regardless of whether they are actively looking. They will take a call. They will listen. And when the right opportunity is in front of them, they will consider it seriously.
The 27%: The Right Opportunity
27% said they would respond for the right opportunity. These professionals have a clear sense of what would make them move, a step up in responsibility, a business whose reputation they respect, a flexibility arrangement that their current employer does not offer, and a salary that reflects what the market will pay. They are reachable, but they are selective. A generic approach will not move them. A specific, well-matched opportunity, presented by someone who understands their career, will.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment – Original Data: The professionals in the 27% are often the hardest to place and the most valuable when placed correctly. They are not going to respond to a speculative message. They are going to respond when someone they trust comes to them with something that is genuinely better than what they have. Building that trust takes time, which is why Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s relationships with passive candidates are maintained long before any specific role exists.
What Headhunting Actually Means in Leisure Travel
Headhunting in leisure travel is not cold-calling a list of names from a database. It is a process built on years of sector-specific relationships, knowing which tailor-made travel consultants are performing well in which businesses, understanding which destination specialists are approaching the ceiling of their current role, and recognising which ski or expedition specialists have the supplier relationships a particular client needs.
Every member of the Ambitions Travel Recruitment team has worked in the travel industry. That is not a background detail, it is what makes the conversations work. When Ambitions Travel Recruitment contacts a settled, high-performing travel professional, it is not a cold approach from an unknown recruiter. It is a conversation between peers who understand the same sector. That is why it gets answered.
The employers who benefit most from this approach are the ones who brief Ambitions Travel Recruitment thoroughly, not just on the role, but on the employer story. What makes this business the right choice for a professional who already has a good job? What is the flexibility arrangement? What does the progression pathway look like? What kind of culture are we describing, and will it hold up when a candidate speaks to someone who works there? The headhunting conversation is only as strong as the employer proposition behind it.
What this means for employers: If your next hire matters, if you need a tailor-made specialist, a destination expert, a senior ski or safari consultant who can hit the ground running, do not start with a job advert and hope. Start with a conversation with Ambitions Travel Recruitment. The person you need is almost certainly already known to us. The question is whether they know enough about your business to say yes.
The Case for Adding Headhunting to Your Talent Strategy
This is not an argument against job adverts. It is an argument for not relying on them exclusively when the talent you need is almost certainly not reading them.
A blended approach, advertising for roles that may attract strong active candidates, while using specialist headhunting for the senior, niche, or hard-to-fill positions, is how the leisure travel businesses that consistently hire well operate. They do not leave the quality of their next hire to chance or to whoever happens to be looking that week. They work with a recruiter who is already in a relationship with the professionals they need.
The cost of a misaligned hire in leisure travel is significant. A tailor-made travel consultant whose product knowledge and client relationships take two years to build does not walk through the door ready-made. Getting the hire right the first time, bringing in someone who was not looking, was not available to advertising, and was approached specifically because their skills matched the brief, is almost always more efficient than the alternative.
The Takeaway
98% of leisure travel professionals will respond to a Head Hunter. 2% will not. A job advert reaches neither group reliably. If the talent your business needs is settled, specialist, and not actively looking, which in leisure travel it almost always is, headhunting is not an optional extra. It is the strategy.
Related reading
Why People Really Leave Leisure Travel Jobs — and Why Retention IS Attraction | Beyond Salary: What Leisure Travel Professionals Actually Want From Their Employer
Ready to attract exceptional travel talent?
Ambitions Travel Recruitment is a boutique agency specialising in leisure travel, placing exceptional talent across the UK, South Africa, GCC, Asia and North America.
Looking to hire? Contact us at info@ambitionstravelrecruitment.com
Looking for your next role? Register at www.ambitionstravelrecruitment.com
FAQ’s
A passive candidate is someone who is not actively job-hunting but would consider moving for the right opportunity. In Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s June 2026 poll of leisure travel professionals, 98% said they would respond to a Head Hunter even when settled. The best talent in leisure travel is almost always passive, and almost never reached by job advertising alone.
A job advert reaches candidates who are actively looking, typically a minority of the total talent pool. Headhunting reaches candidates who are settled, performing well, and not looking, by approaching them directly through specialist relationships. In leisure travel, where the most experienced professionals rarely apply for roles, headhunting is the primary route to the best talent.
Because the best leisure travel professionals are rarely looking. Ambitions Travel Recruitment’s June 2026 poll found that 98% of leisure travel professionals would respond to a Head Hunter, but the majority are not watching job boards. A job advert competes for active candidates only a smaller, less experienced pool than the passive majority a specialist Headhunter can reach.
Ambitions Travel Recruitment maintains long-term relationships with specialist leisure travel professionals across the UK, South Africa, and North America. When a brief comes in, we approach professionals who match it directly, not by posting an advert, but by drawing on existing relationships with people who are performing well and not actively looking. Every member of our team has worked in travel, which is why those conversations happen.
Senior and specialist roles where the required expertise is rare, and the impact of a wrong hire is high. Tailor-made travel consultants, destination specialists, ski and expedition specialists, UHNW concierge advisors, and senior product managers are almost never actively looking, and almost always reachable through headhunting. Advertising these roles typically produces a weaker shortlist than a targeted headhunting approach.
Yes, that is precisely when Ambitions Travel Recruitment tends to make contact. Our June 2026 poll found that 63% of leisure travel professionals are always open to a conversation, even when settled. Registering with Ambitions Travel Recruitment means you are in our network before you need to be, so when the right opportunity arises, the conversation can happen quickly.
Yes. The right opportunity in leisure travel rarely appears on a job board; it arrives as a conversation. Registering with Ambitions Travel Recruitment means we know your background, your ambitions, and what it would take for you to move before the right role exists. There is no obligation and no pressure. Just the right conversation at the right time.
