Amadeus’s long-serving CEO Luis Maroto was the highest paid CEO among Europe’s leading travel companies in 2017.

The Madrid-based firm awarded Maroto $5.6 million last year, more than any of his peers among the 21 other businesses Skift surveyed.

Maroto’s total pay packet included a fixed salary of $1 million (€0.9 million), a bonus of $1.3 million (€1.1 million), and stock awards totalling $3.2 million (€2.7 million).

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Despite helping his company achieve a net profit of over a $1 billion, Maroto’s remuneration actually fell slightly compared with 2016.

Second on the 2017 list was Willie Walsh, the boss of British Airways and Iberia parent company IAG, on $5.3 million (£4 million). Third was another airline boss, Lufthansa’s Carsten Spohr with $4.9 million (€4.2 million).

Of the 23 CEOs (including the one executive chairman), there are nine from the airline industry and nine from the hotel sector.

Interestingly, the median average was higher in the hotel sector while the mean average was higher in airlines. Some of the best paid travel CEOs were from the airline world but this was balanced out by the likes of Norwegian and Dart Group, which paid their leading execs less, perhaps because they both own a significant chunk of their respective companies.