The Travel Media Awards is pleased to announce the return of Step Up, an internship programme driving diversity and inclusion in travel media for young people, for 2025.

The Travel Media Awards recognises the importance of cultivating and uplifting people from different backgrounds to strengthen the industry by better reflecting the diversity within the UK.

For the second year of the scheme, an additional six leading travel organisations have joined APL Media, FINN Partners, Intrepid Travel and TTG Media, to offer month-long placements to winners. The complete list of partners for 2025 are:

  • APL Media
  • easyJet holidays
  • FINN Partners
  • Ink Global
  • Intrepid Travel
  • Kuoni
  • Metro
  • The Sun
  • TTG Media
  • Virgin Atlantic

Step Up interns will also receive a further six months of mentoring. Winners will join us next year at the Travel Media Awards 2025, with promising careers ahead of them in travel media, be that consumer, trade or PR. The Step Up programme is open to anyone aged 18-30 who can demonstrate a passion for travel media and identifies as coming from an underrepresented demographic. Applicants must be UK residents and have the right to work.

Apply for the 2025 Step Up scheme

Step Up Application

Step Up useful links

Have questions or want to find out more about the 2025 Step Up scheme? Click the links below to learn more.

2025 Step Up partners
Step Up FAQs
Step Up: Sample job specification
Step Up: How to succeed in the workplace

*Sources

  • In journalism, research from Statista shows 12% of the UK workforce belong to a non-white ethnic group, while this group makes up 18% of the population. In PR, it’s 10%; in publishing, 15%.
  • A recent study published by Statista shows 59% of journalists are male, compared with the population average of 49%; in PR, there’s a skew in the other direction – 67% of the industry is female, according to the PRCA.
  • The outlook is more positive for LGBTQ+ representation, and it’s important to maintain these figures. In the UK, around 10% of the population identify as LGBTQ+. In the publishing industry, Publishers Assocation data shows 13% of staff are LGBTQ+.
  • In the UK, around 24% of the population have a disability. In journalism, one data set from the NCTJ shows a comparable 22% having a disability or a work-limiting health problem. Meanwhile, in the publishing industry, just 13% have a disability; in PR, 4%.
  • Data from Press Gazette shows 80% of journalists come from households with professional occupations, yet only 33% of the country fall into this demographic, indicating an over-representation of middle- and upper-class voices in UK journalism. The data for the publishing industry is 67%, according to the Publishers Association.