Product & Partnerships Manager - Long Haul

• Sep 2023 - Present

Product & Purchasing Manager

• Oct 2020 - Sep 2023

Product & Purchasing Manager for Asia, Africa, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the UAE

Product Manager

• Oct 2019 - Aug 2020

Product Manager at Meraki Travel, an award-winning start up Tour Operator focused on offering customisable multi-centre holidays through an innovative new website. Despite being a start up, Meraki Travel is actually part of Kuoni Travel UK and therefore DER Touristik. My tasks include managing our seven existing destinations and also assessing potential new destinations, before delivering the strongest of these to our customers through a range of curated itineraries and hand-picked experiences. I am heavily involved with the marketing of these itineraries and am responsible for ensuring each destination is profitable and is operationally sound. This is done by maintaining incredibly close relationships with each of our DMC partners overseas and negotiating the best possible rates and benefits on behalf of Meraki Travel customers. Show less

Product Manager

• Apr 2019 - Oct 2019

Worldwide FIT Product Manager responsible for over 20 destinations, including more than a dozen in Europe. In this role, I worked incredibly closely with the Marketing Department to help maximise ROI for our significant advertising budget. This money was spent primarily on print advertising as that performed best with the company's older clientele. In addition to our daily newspaper adverts, we also distributed newsletters and brochures, with the latter being sent to our most regular customers as often as four times per year. Due to our customers love for Europe and our desire to keep competing with more well-known brands, we had to negotiate incredibly hard with hotels and tourist boards to ensure we had the best possible rates and allocations and the most marketing money available each year. Thankfully these are tasks we thrived on and we were successful in almost every endeavour. Show less

Product Manager

• Jul 2018 - Dec 2018

Product & Purchasing Manager responsible for Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. Product & Purchasing Manager responsible for Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

Product Manager

• Oct 2016 - Mar 2018

As Asia Product Manager, I was responsible for contracting over 250 hotels across 10 Asian countries. My main role was to negotiate and secure annual contracts at each of these hotels as well as regular tactical promotions in order to further increase sales. These promotions often formed the basis of large marketing campaigns created by myself and the Head of Marketing. In order to maximise the success of these campaigns we worked with the relevant tourist boards and national carriers. We ran a number of large campaigns including two with the Thai Tourist Board. These were part funded with monies we'd secured by winning their annual marketing tender. Each of our TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) campaigns cost in excess of £25k and included both print coverage and digital exposure. Below is a short list of my former roles: - Contracted over 250 hotels, ensuring each hotel meets the high standards we as a company set. - Secured tactical promotions, many of which had booking windows exclusive to Kenwood Travel customers. - Secured commercial agreements with key hotels and DMCs in order to incentive the business and it's employees. - Met with Airline suppliers on a quarterly basis to review performance. - Managed and monitored the performance of my destinations, ensuring we are competitively priced and are meeting the businesses requirements. - Supplied weekly offers for our e-newsletter, based on current market trends. - Managed hotel allocations, stop sales and building works notifications and sent them to the relevant departments. - Ensured product information is accurate and up to date on our website and in our internal systems. - Arranged product training for our Sales Consultants. - Arranged Educational visits for myself and the Sales Consultants. - Worked with Customer Services to resolve any complex issues or complaints. - Worked with Accounts to resolve any complex price discrepancies. - Attended both domestic and international trade-shows. Show less

Product Executive

• May 2015 - Oct 2016

My main responsibilities include managing all aspects of Letsgo2's Far East program, providing vital support for our European program and administering Airline contracts to the Ickenham Travel Group (Letsgo2 for Leisure and Business Travel Direct for Corporate). My day to day tasks include: - Acquiring and maintaining direct hotel contracts for our core properties in the Far East and Europe. - Maintaining and strengthening our relationships with our overseas DMC's. - Contributing to brand strategy and development. - Managing the businesses Criteo (display advertising) account and providing reports which highlight our PPC (CPC), CPA, number of bookings, booking values and profit margins. - Using GDS (Sabre) Mark Up Manager to mark up and redistribute our airline contracts. - Managing all incoming airline contracts/promotions and distributing them to the relevant product manager. - Providing reports on sales figures whether it be by destination, hotel, month or year. - Recording all media coverage (written press only) and notifying product managers when necessary. - Ensuring all prices and offers on our website are up to date and competitive. - Providing rates, availability updates and product advice to reservations staff. - Contributing to our e-newsletter (distributed 3 times a week to 80k people). - Contributing to our social media posts and our blog. - Securing marketing contributions from preferred partners. - Tracking the ROI for our multiple marketing channels. Show less

Personal Travel Expert

• Feb 2014 - May 2015

As a Personal Travel Expert for Kuoni Travel UK my daily tasks include taking on new customers, managing repeat customers, building tailor-made itineraries and managing my customers trips from the time of booking to the time they return home.I rely on my superior product knowledge to help me craft the itinerary and my customer service skills to keep the customer satisfied, particularly should they experience a problem with their booking. For example an airline schedule change.I work through various different channels in order to maximise my sales. As well as assisting walk-in customers I also work over both our store phone and our national phone system. My final point of contact is through our websites live chat facility. To manage all of these requires excellent organisational skills and an efficient work rate.High Street Kensington is our flagship store and I sell directly on behalf of Kuoni Travel UK. I take a lot of pride in what I do and I always aim to deliver excellent customer service within an efficient time frame. These components combined allow me to take on a steady flow of new enquiries, thus leading to more bookings and an ever growing customer base. Show less

Data Set Up Assistant/Land Inventory co-ordinator

• Aug 2010 - Feb 2014

Whilst working as a Data Set Up Assistant my daily tasks included receiving new hotel contracts from our purchasing team, reviewing them to ensure they were 100% correct, loading them into our bespoke reservations system and managing the existing hotel contracts. It was very common for special offers to be released, hotels to undergo a name change and hotels to add or subtract rooms from the property. Dealing with issues like these was also part of my role.I was also responsible for ensuring hotels were taken off sale should they be closed or fully booked and for loading our tour, excursion and transfer contracts. This would then allow us to cost a complete package for our customers to book. Working in this team required great product knowledge, an awareness of how the travel industry functions globally, the ability to work with people based all over the world and the skills to work both individually and as part of a group. It was essential I had a good eye for detail as the smallest contracting or administration error could cost the company hundreds of thousands of pounds.We were required to work extremely closely with both our purchasing and product teams to ensure our hotels on sale were up the high standards we set and to make sure everything loaded was contractually correct. We were given strict deadlines in keeping with our brochure schedule and we would always ensure we met the necessary date. Failure to do so would cause huge administration and sales problems. I am proud of the fact we never missed a deadline. Show less

Barman

• Oct 2009 - Jul 2010

In September 2009 Greene King acquired The Dorset Arms in East Grinstead. This local pub/restaurant occupies a fantastic spot on the town's historic high street and has been popular for many years. Greene King proceeded to spend £400k renovating the pub to be one of the first in its new line of "premium pubs". As staff we had to undergo many training courses. By the time we had completed these we were all highly trained and ready to run a pub/restaurant with little or no supervision. With the pub being part of the premium range our customer service skills had to be exceptional. We were serving a higher standard of food and drink and charging significantly more than other pubs within the Greene King group. Poor service was inexcusable. We were monitored not only on our customer service but also on our efficiency, from the time it took to complete an order to the amount of drinks wasted due to spillages and over pouring. In my time at The Dorset Arms I became a well recognised and highly respected member of staff. Despite my age I was often left in charge of the pub and left to manage other staff members. I knew the repeat customers well and I always delivered on my promises. I prided myself on providing excellent service whether it was your first visit or your tenth. The level of responsibility given to me proved hugely beneficial as I learnt how to manage different situations, both good and bad. From motivating staff to handling customer complaints. Show less