Proposition Manager - Rail and Ground Transportation

• Jan 2023 - Present

Operations Manager

• Jun 2022 - Nov 2022

Lead the operations team preparing pre-season, contracting hotels and excursion providers. Negotiated and contracted the best terms and rates with service and coach suppliers, across all tours. Monitor and improve margin on each departure through effective room and vehicle utilisation and negotiations with suppliers. Implement and monitor the outcome of holiday price changes. Manage Health & Safety requirements across the programme, ensuring compliance and audits completed prior to travel. Analyse tour feedback and implement improvements in advance of the next departure in the series. Act as Super User and ambassador for Travel Studio and ensure the system’s full capabilities are utilised across the team. Conducted a comprehensive review of customer and tour documentation, significantly enhancing the design and effectiveness of various processes.

Transport Team Manager

• Oct 2020 - Jun 2022

Direct the preparation of high volumes of transport orders across a diverse and complex network of international partners and suppliers. Oversee the accurate and timely fulfilment of orders across multiple teams, ensuring confirmations, costs and deadlines are correctly recorded. Ensure service levels are consistently achieved by our partners and suppliers with issues quickly resolved. Triage high volumes of customer requests to ensure an industry leading customer experience is delivered against constantly shifting priorities. Work collaboratively with IT to drive the transformation and evolution of systems and processes to deliver efficiency and cost savings whilst improving service. Plan for and respond to operational challenges whilst maintaining our regulatory responsibility to the customer. Recruitment, selection, training and developing staff members including designing and hosting workshops.Defining projects:• Successful ownership and management of a 3-month French rail strike, impacting 10,000 GRJ customers, for which I won a Special Recognition Award and a £5000 holiday. • Accompanying the first European tour to depart the UK after the first Covid lockdown to understand how the pandemic had changed travel and the impact this might have on the customer experience. • Automation of Flight Loading, saving thousands of hours of manual admin time annually. • Introduction of the Customer Personalisation Framework, setting out the levels at which customers can alter their holiday whist maintaining service and controlling admin time.

Transport & Customer Personalisation Manager

• Jun 2018 - Oct 2020

Transport Team Manager

• Dec 2017 - Jun 2018

Operations Supervisor - UK Travel Team

• Jul 2008 - Dec 2017

Oversee the day to day running of the reservations team in a contact centre environment. Monitor and improve the overall efficiency of the team, amend and introduce internal processes. Maintain excellent working relationships between NYS and our third party suppliers. Instigate improvements to booking systems to ensure optimum benefit and value for money for clients as well as NYS. Implementation of new clients, including hosting training sessions at clients’ regional offices or online. Prepare and conduct monthly, quarterly and annual performance reviews for my team. Defining projects: * Introduction of NYS’ first ever employee recognition scheme – the OPALawards. * Introduction of NYS’ first ever dedicated client trainer resource with a focus on online adoption. * Full overhaul of rail admin process (issuing, dispatching, refunding tickets) saving hours per day and allowing for a reduction in resource. * Cross-training and upskilling of separate rail & hotel teams to create the UK Travel Team, enabling a seamless and consistent customer experience. * Introduction of a single database of all NYS clients and the key information required for Operations.

Customer Relations Specialist

• Oct 2004 - Jul 2008

Responsible for monitoring the overall feedback about the product and communicating findings to internal and external stakeholders using reports and presentations, it was my role to ensure continuous improvement in customer satisfaction. I responded to all customer feedback including complaint letters, emails and telephone calls within strict deadlines as set by the company and ABTA. I also played an integral part in the design and implementation of new Customer Satisfaction Questionnaires and analysing methodologies. Working closely with the Contracting Team and senior stakeholders, I also ensured that any supplier issues were swiftly addressed with preventative measures put in place to reduce recurrence of issues. Defining projects: * Design and implementation of the new Customer Relations Strategy including updating feedback questionnaires, upgrading methodologies for tracking and reporting on feedback. * Implementing Product Change Forms to simplify communicating feedback to Contracting and Senior Management Teams.