Director, Destination Exp-Partnerships & Operations

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation & benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

Position Summary:

The Director, Destination Experiences, Partners and Operations, is responsible for the delivery & execution of the brand's guest experience aspirations of the revenue-generating and non-revenue generating Destination Experiences by Celebrity Cruises. The Director will be accountable and responsible for the successful delivery of over 3,000 destination experiences across specific regions of the world and strategic ports of calls. 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. This position is monitoring on a constant basis guest feedback, revenue, penetration, spend, risks, incidents, compliance as well as how effective the experiences are communicating, marketed and sold pre and onboard the fleet. This position is all encompassing responsible for flawless delivery of the destination experiences ashore and onboard with the ultimate goal to meet and exceed the brand's revenue and guest satisfaction goals. This Director is the owner of the Tour Operator Partnership model which includes managing over 300 tour operators globally.

• Director is highly regarded 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 and shipboard employees.
• Serves as a liaison between the product strategy, product management and the product owner team to support seamless transition of product concepts to a product execution team. Serves as a content expert and resource for the product strategy team to leverage in refining strategic initiaives and guest experience recommendations.
• Ensuring & monitoring the effective 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.
• Leading and developing monthly and quarterly strategic updates and information to our shipboard executive leadership teams to ensure they have the resources and tools to succeed.
• Strategic leader of the tour operator and partnership ecosystem for the team and department. Developing programs and incentives as applicable to strength tour operator and partnership relationships that have a return on investment.
• Leveraging the product strategy, product brief, guest experience standards, customer insights 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 & insurance requirements, contracting, deployment and the request for proposal process.
• Responsiple for daily, weekly and constant communication with tour operators and maintaining a high level partnership ecosystem with our external tour partners.
• Owns the process and reporting of auditing and inspecting experiences and tours.
• Manage 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 evaluating inventory levels of experiences within a short and mid time period and ensure 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.
• Lead the post review of a season and document lessons learned to be applied for other regions or next season.
• Managing the tour operator and partner contract process. Managing over 100 contracts for one calendar year.
• Managing all the requirements from risk, audit, compliance and insurance related to the safe and compliant delivery of destination experiences delivered across the world.
• Primary Liaison with Deployment to proactively mitigate operational challenges and make recommendations to ensure maximum experience revenue and guest experience with the destination is achieved.
• Oversee 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, and shipboard employees.
• Influential manager as part of a high performing operational team, providing structure, process and culture of collaboration that extends to internal and external stakeholders.
• Serve as a representative of the brand at internal and external cross-functional conversations, events and projects.
• Work with limited direction, usually within a complex and often ambiguous environment, to drive rigorous, fact-based recommendations to executives, functional, or regional management.
• Interact with other departments, inclusive of, but not limited, to Deployment, Destination Development, Sales, Marketing, Revenue Management, Hotel Operations, Onboard Revenue, Port Operations, and the international offices.
• Performs other duties as required. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position. Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management.

• Bachelor's degree in related discipline or equivalent. Master's degree or higher would be a plus.
• 5 years or more 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.
• 5 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.
• Experience in working within high-performing operational team.
• Experience in a project management.
• Ability to travel up to 30-40% of the time.
• Exemplary leader who inspires and motivates team & stakeholder performance.
• Exceptional ability to understand the customer needs and ensure the product is delivered with the guest needs as the primary driver and focus.
• 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.
• 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.