What’s on the minds of many in travel and hospitality today?

Last week 11 travel executives spanning hotels, airlines, casinos, cruise and online travel met the U.S. President in the Oval Office and stood shoulder to shoulder for a picture that’s been widely circulating across the travel and hospitality industries. Why?

There were no women among them.

Other writers have covered disparity among hospitality leadership far more extensively than is possible here today, and I’d rather highlight those who deserve to be and should be in that frame.

But first, let’s be clear about the stakes.

Travel and tourism is forecast to contribute $12 trillion to the global economy in 2026, accounting for 9.9% of global GDP, while supporting 376 million jobs worldwide, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council in a May 2026 report .

In hospitality, women make up the majority of the workforce, but few still hold positions of leadership.

Women are also the dominate influence on how various hotels and experiences are booked.

The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) estimates that 80% of travel agencies are owned and operated by women, which matches almost identically with how consumers make decisions about travel.

According to recent studies, up to 82% of where people go is determined by women.

Being in a photograph is about more than just optics, and the photo’s distortion has more to do with industry composition and achievement than it does with white balance.

Women are already running hotel companies, building brands, overseeing billions of dollars in bookings, deciding how luxury evolves and creating entirely new categories of travel.

The following list of women leaders in hospitality is hardly exhaustive, but in a sense that is precisely the point. Finding women with the experience and ambition to be at the industry’s most consequential tables does not require an extensive search.

Let’s open the aperture by a dozen stops and allow a little more light into the lens of hospitality leadership.

Sonia Cheng, Rosewood Hotel Group

As CEO of Rosewood Hotel Group , Sonia Cheng leads a company whose portfolio now encompasses 60 properties in 26 countries and territories, with more than 30 additional properties under development. Rosewood has also expanded beyond its namesake ultra-luxury hotels into New World Hotels & Resorts, wellness brand Asaya and private-members club Carlyle & Co.

Cheng has helped turn a Hong Kong-rooted hospitality company into one of luxury travel’s most globally ambitious operators, while pushing a philosophy the company calls “Relationship Hospitality” rather than prioritizing scale.

Tina Edmundson, Marriott International

Tina Edmundson oversees one of the largest concentrations of luxury hotel brands anywhere in the world. As Marriott International’s President of Luxury, she’s in charge of strategy for The Ritz-Carlton, Ritz-Carlton Reserve, St. Regis, BVLGARI Hotels & Resorts, EDITION, The Luxury Collection, JW Marriott and W Hotels.

Before assuming that role in 2023, Edmundson oversaw Marriott’s global brand and marketing strategy and helped manage the architecture of roughly 30 brands following Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood. Her current purview spans everything from operational performance and development to branded residences and new forms of luxury travel.

Rachel Humphrey, Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance

Rachel Humphrey has made the leadership gap itself part of her work. After serving as executive vice president and COO (including a period as interim president and CEO) of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association –an organization representing 20,000+ hoteliers and whose members own about 60% of all U.S. hotels, contributing more than $371 billion to U.S. GDP–she founded the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance in 2021.

It has since grown into a coalition of 33 organizations working together to increase women’s representation in hospitality leadership. The Alliance also created a speaker directory designed to help event organizers find qualified female experts to lend their voices to conference stages.

Sheila Johnson, Salamander Collection

Sheila Johnson founded Salamander Collection in 2005 and built it around an alternative to standardized luxury: acquiring, managing and developing properties while preserving their individual character. The privately owned company now operates luxury destinations from Virginia and Washington to Florida, Colorado and the Caribbean, and has won accolades from Forbes Travel Guide.

Johnson, who Forbes estimates is worth about $1.2 billion, built her hospitality business after cofounding BET and has become one of the most prominent Black owners in American luxury hospitality.

Shannon Knapp, The Leading Hotels of the World

Shannon Knapp became President and CEO of The Leading Hotels of the World in 2019, only months before the pandemic delivered one of the worst shocks the hotel business has experienced. Today she oversees an organization representing more than 400 independent luxury hotels in more than 80 countries with roughly 200 employees worldwide.

Under her leadership, LHW surpassed $1 billion in annual reservation revenue in both 2022 and 2023. More importantly, Knapp sits at the center of one of hospitality’s defining commercial questions: how independent luxury hotels can access distribution, technology, loyalty and commercial advantages without surrendering their independence.

Barbara Muckermann, Kempinski Hotels

When Barbara Muckermann took over Kempinski, she became the first woman to lead the company in its 127-year history. As group CEO she oversees more than 75 hotels in 33 countries while Kempinski pursues plans to add another 25 hotels and residences across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Before hotels, Muckermann led Silversea Cruises and spent more than 25 years in luxury and travel businesses. “Luxury brands don’t remain relevant by standing still. They remain relevant by continuing to innovate,” she wrote in May 2026 . “That’s far easier to execute when you have skin in the game — controlling not just the vision, but the asset as well.”

Anna Nash, Explora Journeys

After more than two decades working with ultra-luxury brands including Rosewood, Orient-Express and Aman–where she ultimately became chief commercial officer–Nash was appointed President of MSC Group’s Explora Journeys in 2024.

Her responsibility for the brand’s strategic vision and growth as Explora expands toward a six-ship fleet. More recently, the company has deliberately positioned its ships not simply as cruises, but as moving five-star hotels, blurring another traditional boundary between hospitality and travel.

Priya and Priti Paul, Apeejay Surrendra Group

The contribution of sisters Priya and Priti Paul illustrates how hospitality leadership can extend beyond hotel operations. Priya Paul, Chairperson and Executive Director of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels , transformed THE Park into a distinctly Indian collection of contemporary luxury boutique hotels and has overseen expansion to more than 33 properties across THE Park and Zone by The Park brands.

Priti Paul, an MIT- and Harvard-educated architect and director of the broader Apeejay Surrendra Group, has led its real-estate and design work and helped shape projects across the family enterprise. Together, they represent the ownership, design and operating sides of hospitality in India.

Gilda Perez-Alvarado, Orient Express/Accor

Before joining Accor, Gilda Perez-Alvarado rose to global CEO of JLL Hotels & Hospitality, advising sovereign wealth funds, private-equity firms, brands and family offices on hotel investment around the world. Today she is both Accor’s chief strategy officer and CEO of Orient Express.

That puts her in charge of corporate strategy and owner relationships as she develops one of travel’s most storied names across hotels, trains and sailing yachts. The Orient Express La Minerva has opened in Rome, La Dolce Vita Orient Express is operating on rail, and the brand has recently launched an ambitious expansion onto the water with the world’s largest sailing yacht , the Corinthian.

Chitra Stern, Martinhal Family Hotels & Resorts

Chitra Stern path to leadership was born out of love: for her family, for Portugal and its culture, and for family hospitality. With her husband Roman, she founded Martinhal Family Hotels & Resorts in Lisbon in 2010 and helped pioneer a model combining five-star hospitality with family-oriented design and services.

The business has since expanded into branded residences and real estate, while the Sterns have also developed the United Lisbon International School and Edu Hub Lisbon. More recently, she’s hosted talks with groups from Entrepreneurs’ Organization , a community of about 20,000 coming from 80+ countries according to its website.

Lindsey Ueberroth, Preferred Hotels & Resorts

For more than 20 years, Lindsey Ueberroth has been one of independent hospitality’s most consequential advocates. As CEO of Preferred Hotels & Resorts , she was instrumental in repositioning the company as global luxury brand and building the I Prefer loyalty program, giving independent hotels a way to compete with the loyalty machinery of the major chains.

Preferred crossed $1 billion in reservation revenue under her leadership. As it continues expanding its global membership, it’s also significantly contributed to the industry’s knowledge base and awareness about itself regarding consumer expectations.

Mita Vohra, Sarova Hotels

Mita Vohra brings a different geography and ownership model into the picture. A board director and head of sales, marketing, revenue and distribution at Kenya’s Sarova Hotels, she is part of the second generation of a family that helped build one of East Africa’s best-known homegrown hospitality groups.

Sarova operates city, coast and safari properties across Kenya, and Vohra has helped develop international markets while emphasizing African culture as a commercial advantage. The company recently celebrated 50 years in business, and Vohra represents its next generation of entrepreneurship.

Not every woman on this list would have been a logical invitee to a White House meeting focused specifically on U.S. inbound tourism. Some run global businesses headquartered elsewhere, but that’s not the argument.

The argument is that the photograph shows a narrow picture of an industry whose workforce, consumers, ownership and commercial leadership are anything but narrow.

Once you cross borders the industry becomes even more deeply interconnected, and the more fallible it becomes to conflate politics or myopic points of view with the composition and promise of the market itself.

Hospitality companies can choose who appears in their boardrooms, on their stages and in the rooms where they advocate for the true interests (and advantages) of diversity. And while Washington can influence those choices, it doesn’t have to dictate them.

Again, these highlights are by no means exhaustive, and don’t even touch elements of socioeconomic disparities or social inequities that contribute to this multifactorial issue. Lord knows how many unacknowledged contributions women are making at every level of the travel and hospitality ladders.

As someone who spent almost 20 years in Washington, D.C. I understand how business people across the world can see the U.S. as a fickle partner and why photos like the one circulating in the industry right now conjure frustration.

It’s a bit reminiscent of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who once popularized the phrase that “the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum.”

The question is this: If women make up the majority of the travel and hospitality industries, who’s willing to let that pendulum swing in a direction that doesn’t account for the whole multi-trillion dollar travel pie?

Let’s widen the frame, shall we?