Glassdoor: Employee Satisfaction (or lack thereof) in the Travel Industry

Glassdoor.com, a cool website where "anyone can find and anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies" has provided an interesting peek at job satisfaction inside the travel industry.

Travel is probably an industry Glassdoor knows something about given the site's founders which include such industry notables as Bob Hohman (Hotwire, Expedia) Tim Besse (Expedia) Ryan Aylward (EzRez, Hotwire) along with a few others who serve on the board who've spent a bit of time in travel: Rich Barton, Erik Blachford and Stephen Kaufer.

And what has Glassdoor, which garners its information from current and former employees, come up with? Might as well start with the OTAs since Glassdoor practically grew up in the OTA world:

The chart above details the approval ratings of the companies themselves and their CEOs as reported by the employees who came to Glassdoor and left feedback. (Hugh Jones isn't rated because of a limited number of responses - probably because he is still new in the role.) Looks like Hotwire is a pretty good place to work - we'll leave it to you to decide if that is because all of these guys left to start Glassdoor or not. (Just kidding, Ryan et al)

Glassdoor's info gets more interesting looking at hoteliers:
The highest rated CEO, Issy Sharp, has just announced that he is stepping down - a real shame according to this report. Bill Marriott and Hyatt's Hoplamazian are just a hair behind Sharp, however.

Not surprisingly, airlines show by far the greatest variability from one to another:

Things appear pretty bleak over at American and American Eagle - with labor strife a way of life at AA, clearly Something isn't Special in the Air. Even US Airways pulls better rankings. Southwest and JetBlue, as usual, prove that they are run more like hoteliers than airlines with ratings like these. (oh, they make money like hoteliers, too)

But the big takeaway? Continental and United - look a the difference in internal company ratings. Glassdoor doesn't have a rating for Jeff, but boy do they have one for Glenn. This is going to be one interesting merger, don't you think?