Overtime in travel and tourism companies

Delayed flights at the airport desk

When a guest's flight lands three hours late at 2 am, the airport representative waits, and those hours are real overtime. Count them from punches after the shift end, ignoring anything under half an hour and rounding the rest down to the quarter hour, and let the airport supervisor approve them the next morning with the flight details noted. Delays are frequent in the winter fog season in north India, so a monthly cap helps spot desks that need another person on the night roster.

Worked example: a fog delay

Imran is an airport representative in Delhi on ₹24,000 gross a month. His gross works out to ₹800 a day over 30 days, or ₹100 an hour on an eight-hour day. His night shift ends at 4 am, but a delayed arrival keeps him until 7:20 am. That is 3 hours 20 minutes after shift end, rounded down to 3 hours 15 minutes. At twice the rate, 3.25 x ₹100 x 2 = ₹650, added to his next salary once his supervisor and HR approve it.

Tour managers: an allowance, not a stopwatch

Counting overtime hour by hour for a tour manager is impractical: on a 12-day tour, the day starts at breakfast and ends when the last guest is back in the hotel. A common arrangement is a fixed daily tour allowance for each tour day, plus comp-off for scheduled weekly offs and holidays worked. Write the arrangement into the tour manager's terms, including what the allowance is meant to cover, and check it against your state's rules on working hours and overtime before relying on it.

Peak-season sales and operations

From March to May and again before Diwali, consultants answer enquiries late into the evening and operations teams chase confirmations. Plan a second evening shift where you can, because a rota is cheaper and fairer than daily overtime. Where overtime still happens, it is picked up nightly from punches, approved by the team lead and then HR, and paid at the working day multiplier, or turned into comp-off, half a day for every 4 hours, if the payout is set that way.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. For airport and branch shifts, have the Overtime policy start counting at shift end, with approval kept on.
2. Airport duty runs through holidays, so check that every multiplier, not just the working day one, is double the ordinary wage rate or more.
3. Set the payout to pay for airport and branch staff, switching to employee's choice only if the policy offers comp-off.
4. Set a monthly overtime cap per person, and look closely at airport desks that reach it during the fog season.
5. Add daily tour allowances for tour managers as monthly payroll inputs, based on confirmed tour days.
6. Ask airport supervisors and team leads to approve overtime within two days, using bulk approval for teams held back by the same delay.

Read more about overtime in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions