Travel Industry Coalition Hires More Than 600 Veterans

The travel industry can take a collective bow with ASTA's report that the Joining Forces Travel Coalition members hired more than 600 veterans during the first four months of the year. In February, ASTA launched the industry coalition with the White House to provide well-deserved career opportunities to veterans and military spouses. The move garnered widespread industry support.
 
“Travel Coalition members committed to providing nearly 3,000 jobs by 2014 and have been extremely active in seeking and hiring veteran job candidates to meet that goal,” said ASTA CEO Tony Gonchar. “This initiative has met with strong positive response as is evidenced by the fact that at just a few months in we are already a fifth of the way to our goal.”
 
A few examples of the coalition partner’ individual initiatives and activities cited by ASTA include are:
    •    Enterprise Holdings. Employee profile: Veteran Jeremy Vandekar served four years in Marine Recon, the Marine Corps’ elite special operations unit and graduated from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. But at 27 years old, he was having trouble finding a job until he applied for a position in Enterprise’s Management Training Program and was formally accepted.
    •    Hertz Corp. Hertz has developed a new Military Portal, which allows veterans and family members to view all openings within every division of Hertz, and apply directly to those openings. Veterans and military family members are encouraged to visit the site http://hertz.jobs/military/
    •    Orbitz Worldwide. Orbitz Worldwide participated in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring our Heroes military spouse hiring event at Fort Hood, which was attended by almost 1,100 military family members and veterans. Since that time, nine military spouses have officially accepted offers of employment for the Orbitz customer service class and another 24 applicants from Fort Hood are currently going through the interview process.

For a listing of Coalition participants, highlights of Coalition firm activities and hiring success stories, please see Coalition News on the Joining Forces Web page on ASTA.org.
 
To learn more about the Joining Forces Travel Industry Coalition, visit ASTA.org or contact Wayne Nelson, director of Industry Affairs.