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The Royal Caribbean Group’s Celebrity Cruises brand has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Manager, Destination Experiences on the Onboard Revenue Operations Team reporting to the Senior Director, Destination Experiences.
This position will work onsite in Miami, Florida
Position Summary:
The Manager, Destination Experiences (Shore Excursions) is responsible for leading a team on the delivery and execution of the brand’s product strategy and guest experience aspirations of the revenue-generating Destination Experiences by Celebrity program. The manager and team will be accountable and responsible for the successful delivery of over 1,000 destination experiences across specific regions of the world and strategic ports of calls. In this role, you would be responsible for taking a concept and making it a reality; while maintaining high levels of quality in execution and attention to detail. This position oversees individual experiences, a collection of experiences and/or partnerships. You would monitor, on a constant basis, guest feedback, revenue, penetration, spend, risks, incidents, compliance as well as how effective the experiences are communicated, marketed, and sold pre-cruise and onboard the fleet. You would analyze guest and tour operator feedback to provide insight and recommendations to improve the overall guest experience. You would also be responsible for holding tour operators and partners accountable with a flawless delivery of the destination experiences ashore and where applicable onboard with the ultimate goal to meet and exceed the brand’s revenue and guest satisfaction goals. You would manage to ensure all destination experiences are ready for each season throughout the year while continuing to refine the overall guest experience.
This position is part of a high-performing team that is responsible for one of the top producing revenue generating business for the brand. Reporting to a Senior Director of Destination Experiences (Shore Excursions) within Onboard Revenue in Hotel Operations. You would lead a small to mid-size team of direct reports, but more importantly be accountable for owning and leading projects that are inclusive of direct reports and key stakeholders within the company. The ability to influence, drive decision and deliver results through effective communication skills, process expertise and project management will have a considerable impact on the success of the brand’s long-term destination experience (shore excursions) revenue-generating business. You would also be a key partner, working across departments to execute elevated experiences throughout the fleet and the destinations we visit.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Serves as the product expert within the brand who excels at bringing stakeholders together around a shared understanding of the guest experience and product strategy that needs to be flawlessly executed and operated by our partners/operators and shipboard employees.
- Be hyper-focused on seasonal readiness for all products while managing the delivery of all experiences on a daily, weekly, seasonal, etc. basis to ensure revenue targets are achieved, guest satisfaction is high, and tour operators are delivery to the expected standards.
- Leads a team responsible for the analysis of guest data and tells a story to provide insights and recommendations for perfecting the guest experience.
- Be solution-oriented and an out-of-the-box thinker and problem solver to provide results to ongoing and new challenges.
- Communicates and liaises effectively with partners and other departments to come behind new and ongoing initiatives.
- Manages tour operator relations while holding them accountable and looking for new opportunities to bring industry-leading experiences to our guests.
- Serves as the primary contact for our shipboard leadership and management to review the quality and results of experiences or the services provided by an operator or partner.
- Leverages the product strategy, product brief, guest experience standards, customer insights, competitive benchmarks, and available research to develop, design and deliver destination experiences for specific ports and regions of the world.
- Responsible for overseeing and working on special projects related to the tour program such as, but not limited to legal and insurance requirements, contracting, deployment and the request for proposal process.
- Responsible for daily, weekly and constant communication with tour operators and maintaining a high level partnership ecosystem with our external tour partners and tour operators.
- Oversees the process and reporting of auditing and inspecting experiences and tours.
- Manages the trends of guest comments related to experience quality and price; constantly recommending to business intelligence opportunities to refine pricing to optimize revenue and guest satisfaction.
- Constantly evaluates inventory levels of experiences within a short and mid time period and ensures there are optimal levels to exceed results.
- Establishes start up plans at the start of every season or new itinerary for the shipboard employees and tour operators to have a well-established seasonal playbook that defines success and sets the success criteria from the start.
- Manages the tour operator and partnership contract process, managing over 100 contracts for one calendar year.
- Manages all the requirements from risk, audit, compliance and insurance related to the safe and compliant delivery of destination experiences delivered across the world.
- Collaborates with Deployment on operational challenges and makes recommendations to ensure maximum experience revenue and guest experience with the destination are achieved.
- Oversees the process for the production and maintenance of the shore excursion collateral, including but not limited to; tour descriptions, operating plans, printed and visual media, contracts, insurance certificates, tour operator restrictions, pricing master, and online content.
- Highly involved in developing training materials and communications that will enhance the knowledge of the product across the brand such as call centers, service agents, marketing, travel agents, and shipboard employees.
- Serves as an influential manager as part of a high performing operational team, providing structure, process and culture of collaboration that extends to internal and external stakeholders.
- Serves as a representative of the brand at internal and external cross-functional conversations, events and projects.
- Works with limited direction, usually within a complex and often ambiguous environment, to drive rigorous, fact-based recommendations to executives, functional, or regional management.
- Interacts with other departments, inclusive of, but not limited, to Deployment, Destination Development, Sales, Marketing, Revenue Management, Hotel Operations, Onboard Revenue, Entertainment, Port Operations, and the international offices.
Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills:
- Bachelor’s degree in related discipline or equivalent. Master’s degree or higher is a plus.
- 10 or more years working in a position or project that took ideas and concepts and delivered them as a final product to a customer or stakeholder. Longer tenure with this type of experience would be a plus.
- 10 years or more of experience in cruise or travel industry, tour operator related business, or experience in destination product development or operations. Longer tenure with this type of experience would be a plus.
- Previous shipboard experience or experience working closely with shipboard leadership is helpful.
- Proven track record of success in fast-paced environment with demanding timelines.
- Strong geographical knowledge and extensive travel experience a plus.
- Experience in working within high-performing operational team.
- Experience in project management.
- Ability to travel up to 10-30% of the time.
- Strong ability to understand the customer needs and ensure the product is delivered with the guest needs as the primary driver and focus. Ability to dissect data and tell a story.
- Be a perceptive manager, creative leader and reliable problem solver, able to understand which ideas will and which won't work.
- Excellent communication skills, empathy, humility and an appreciation for and understanding of lean start up, agile environment.
- Proactive, demonstrate outstanding problem-solving skills and successful in a group setting.
- Exemplary leader who inspires and motivates team and stakeholder performance.
- Highly organized. Methodical in research, order, prioritization and implementation.
- Exceptional project management skills with ability to drive consensus in cross functional teams.
- Must be disciplined and comfortable with ambiguity, possessing the maturity and capability to interact and influence across multiple levels and a global matrixed organization.