Jo Rzymowska: 'If you don’t evolve in travel, you become extinct'
Ilaria Grasso MacolaTravel industry veteran Jo Rzymowska has urged the sector to actively embrace change, especially when it comes to new technology and recruitment, to avoid becoming “extinct”.
Speaking at Aito’s annual conference at the weekend, Rzymowska told delegates to focus on diversifying their workforce by bringing in people who can challenge the status quo.
“We’re in a world now where you need to focus on culture, and you need to focus on people with different traits and thought processes – people who are going to challenge you – because that’s what the new generation is about,” she told Nomadic Thoughts founder Jono Vernon-Powell, who moderated the conference.
Rzymowska also called on the sector not to fear technological advances such as AI, as “people will always buy from people". “Elon Musk gets the headlines, but AI is not going to take over,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful AI is here, and it’s here to stay, so we need to embrace it and benefit from it.”
The adopted daughter of a German Jewish mother and a Polish Catholic father, Rzymowska told delegates how she was brought up in Middlesex in a house “that was always open” with her parents taking in orphans throughout the Troubles in Ireland.
Her passion for travelling developed age 10, she revealed, when she went on her first solo trip, travelling to Nigeria to visit relatives. “I was a white middle-class kid from Pinner and I had never mixed with people from a different background,” she recounted. “And I honestly believe that was my start.”
Rzymowska has climbed the corporate ladder over her 40-year career, which saw her go from overseas rep – during which time she delivered a customer’s unexpected baby in a hotel toilet – to becoming Celebrity Cruises managing director EMEA before leaving the company in June 2023.
Despite not seeing her gender and sexual orientation as a hindrance, Rzymowska never thought she could be her true self until she joined the Royal Caribbean Group in 2005.
She said the decision to come out was due to the group doing “things right” and because she owed it to her team. “When people don’t feel they can be their true selves they don’t bring out their true best,” she added. “I wasn’t being fair to my teams and the people around me.”
A DEI champion since coming out, Rzymowska was recognised last year as one of the top LGBT+ figures in the business world when she joined Yahoo Finance’s LGBT+ Role Model lists.
Despite leaving the corporate world behind earlier this year, Rzymowska has taken a non-executive role at Hays Travel as well as set up her own coaching and mentoring business Jovolution. “To me it’s about evolving, because if you don’t evolve, you become extinct,” she said.
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