Travel and Tourism Operations Manager 4 Africa, up to £28k, Berkshire

A Travel and Tourism operations manager who has responsibility for day-to-day tour operations and product delivery (with emphasis on quality and safety) of tours within Africa . The Operations Manager is the first point of call for on-tour incidents and so this job will suit someone after a challenge of working in an ever changing environment. The Operations Manager ensures through recruitment, training and management that our client has the best tour leaders leading tours who are focused on achieving the company vision

Key Responsibilities:

Tour Management:

• Responsible for maintaining accuracy of existing parts of the tour information (trip notes, planning sheets, etc).
• Responsible for ensuring quality and safety on all services provided on Explore tours.
• Investigate any quality issues, provide Customer Relations with detailed information to enable them to reply efficiently to customer letters and ensure pro-active steps are taken to avoid future complaints.
• Work closely with Product Managers to ensure tours operate smoothly and meet the expectations of customers.

Tour Leader Management:

• Effective liaison with tour leaders and local agents to ensure high performance levels in line with company strategy.

Tour Leader recruitment and training:

• Participate in selection days and training of Tour Leaders (in house and overseas), including attending first aid courses.
• Aim to obtain highest Industry levels of tour leader recruitment and training.

Incidents:

• Deal efficiently with day-to-day operational problems, one-off incidents and crisis situations.
• Participate in duty rota (cover one week in every six ).

Budgets:

• Responsible for Tour-leader travel budgets

Customer Services:

• On-going training of Sales Team and assist with queries from customers to aid in the sale of tours.

Travel Fairs:

• Attend and participate in World Travel Market, Adventure Travel presentations and other Trade Fairs as requested.
• Meet with new and existing ground agents to ensure quality and safety on all Explore tours.
• To participate in/run ad hoc projects/tasks as required

Overseas travel:

• Travel overseas to include tour leader training, dealing with incidents, recces, quality control and industry familiarisation trips / product knowledge (possibly at short notice).

Skills and Experience:

• Proven people management skills
• Commercially aware
• Excellent negotiation skills
• Effective communication and presentation skills
• Demonstrable organisational, communication & interpersonal skil
• Proven ability to work to deadlines.
• Team player
• Experience of working as an Operations Manager
• Able to demonstrate experience of dealing efficiently with customers and problems on tours (tour leading/guide experience a distinct advantage)
• Extensive travel experience within Africa
• Demonstrable results inside an operations environment
• Knowledge of the adventure travel market