Director of Tour Operations - Chicago, United States - AHI INTERNATIONAL

Description

Who is Certares Homecoming?

Our Company has been creating innovative, small-group, affinity travel programs for intellectually curious and discerning travelers for almost 100 years.

Our trips are educationally and culturally focused, delight the mind, and ensure that the experience is a comprehensive one.

We offer luxury land, river, and cruise itineraries curated by a team of experts who bring decades of experience in planning travel programs around the globe.

With deep relationships worldwide and a hard-working, travel-loving team, we continuously reimagine and deliver top quality experiences that our travelers will remember for a lifetime.

Job Summary
AHI Travel is looking to add a Director, Tour Operations to our Operations Department.

This position adds value to the AHI Travel brand and extends our tradition of excellence by striving to provide the highest service and professional levels.

This position will manage the Operations team who coordinate all activities and passenger details related to the operations of international tours as well as educate and work with internal departments.

These activities include, but are not limited to, gathering, compiling and communicating all day-to-day operating needs between suppliers, Travel Directors, Product Managers, and customer service teams.

AHI will make the investment in someone who wants to be with us for the long term


Essential Job Functions:

• Ensure consistency in the delivery of the traveler experience across all international programs.
• Prepare annual departure schedule and highlevel milestones for the Operations team.
• Assign annual tour programs to Operations team members.
• Assist team in preparation of annual deposit schedules by program.
• Lead weekly team meetings, solving problems and ensuring the team is on track.
• Assist in organization and scheduling of yearly program milestones.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with the Travel Director team and international suppliers.
• Assist in creation of Travel Director documents and collaterals. Facilitate season startup and seasonend conferences. Communicate operations changes throughout the season and resolve operations issues with Travel Directors and suppliers.
• Ensure accurate/timely supplier and Travel Director communications including reconfirmations, manifests, and lastminute changes.
• Support the delivery of appropriate information internally to support operational activities.
• Maintain and improve systems for smooth tour operations including inventory management, data/information gathering and communication.
• Reconfirm review dates for each supplier to minimize penalties.
• Manage posttour financial reviews and invoicing.
• Review posttour reports and communicate results internally to facilitate constant improvement.
• Oversee Travel Director and supplier prepayment requests and cash advances.
• Attend weekly inventory meetings.
• Handle process for passenger special requests including dietary, extra nights, private transfer, private car tours, special excursions, and request and get specific information required.
• Manage highlevel onsite tour incidents as part of a global response management team.

What you bring:

• Bachelor's degree (B. A.) from fouryear college or university; or one to two years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 3+ experience in planning and operating international travel programs
• 1+ years of people management experience
• International Travel experience is a plus
• Ability to develop partnerships with multiple departments
• Strong relationship development skills
• Must be willing and able to travel overseas and such travel may provide little or no advance warning and may occur over weekends and/or holidays.
• Excellent communication skills
• General knowledge of destinations and geography
• Strong Microsoft Word and Excel Skills

What you can expect:

• Work with talented and diverse individuals who are passionate about world travel, geography, history, and culture.
• Join a purposedriven company committed to creating lifelong bucketlist tour experiences for our travelers.
• Worklife balance is important to us, and we want our associates to have balanced lives, so we offer remote working arrangements for positions that can be effectively performed remotely.

Personal Characteristics:

• A selfstarter, confident in your abilities, selfmotivated and able to work effectively with little supervision.
• A highenergy, resultsoriented individual who can make a difference; an individual who takes the initiative, makes things happen, accepts accountability, and has a "can do" attitude; has a sense of urgency.
• Solid business acumen with qualitative and quantitative analytical skills.
• Creative and flexible in attitude and style to adapt to new situations in a rapidly changing, dynamic environment.
• Desire to work for a growing company.
• A strong value