Salary Range $75,000 – $90,000 DOE
About Us:
Calling all travel and food lovers! We’re Walks and Devour, global leaders in the tours and activities industry, part of the City Experiences family. We’re not your average company. We’re a passionate, innovative team of travel enthusiasts dedicated to creating unforgettable experiences.
Join us in shaping the future of tours and activities. We’re seeking smart and ambitious individuals who want to be part of something fast-paced and exciting. With us, you’ll have room to grow and develop. Our culture is laid-back yet professional, fostering a collaborative and approachable environment. We celebrate diversity, creativity, and dynamism.
If you’re ready to embark on an exciting journey, where you can make a difference and leave your mark, we’d love to receive your application.
About You:
We are looking for a Ground Operations Manager who is a strong, engaging, and performance-oriented professional. Our ideal candidate will be flexible, collaborative, self-starting and highly organized. This role will require a keen eye for detail and the propensity for dynamic and unique problem-solving. This person must have high energy, a “can do attitude,” and must also embody City Experiences’ RESPECT Service System.
About the Opportunity:
As Ground Operations Manager you will be the active leader of our New York market: supporting and expanding our existing business in New York. Aside from being heavily involved in the re-design of existing, development and launch of our new walking tours, food tours, and day trips in the region, you will focus on the details and the customer-facing experience; recruiting and managing the right team of Guides and Coordinators; managing relationships with any external partners or suppliers; ensuring that our operations procedures line up with our needs on the ground and our central teams and leadership are well informed.
You will be the key decision-maker for the day-to-day running of your market, focused on the details to ensure that the vision of a tour lines up with the reality on the day. You will be the chief gatherer of feedback – from guides, partners, guests and personal experience. Working with the Central Ops Team you will remain up to date on the financial performance of each of our tours, trouble-shooting discrepancies in tour costs and brainstorming ways to improve.
The ideal candidate will have prior experience in tourism, preferably in tours & activities specifically, with bonus points for working with and managing a team of Tour Guides and for having Product Development experience. You should be excited to champion a team of hard workers that support our ever-expanding client base. It is important that you can draw from your own work experience and make observations to look for dynamic and efficient solutions to all issues that can arise from people management.
This role will be based in New York City and will be responsible for supporting our continued growth through developing and nourishing a network of Guides, Suppliers, and Coordinators. This is not a typical desk job; we expect you to be out and about at least half of the time, trialing new and existing products, meeting with suppliers and tour guides, networking and creating opportunities for growth. You would need to be available to work on a flexible schedule with the need to be present for tours departing from central NYC early in the morning and for off-schedule events and travel.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
- Product development and redevelopment, where product revisions are required or requested; offering feedback on new opportunities and providing product training for new operations, customer service or central staff
- Procedures & Documentation: develop and upkeep all relevant Guide, Coordinator & Product documentation
- Assume responsibility for the existing operation in New York: managing the day-to-day operations and post-tour reconciliation
- Manage the working relationship with a wide range of partners such as sites, restaurants and other food tour vendors, transport suppliers, any other external partner/operator; including setting up agreements, negotiating rates and maintaining relationships
- Recruitment, onboarding, and training of guides & coordinators
- Guide and coordinator scheduling & optimal staffing: ensuring we have enough high-quality guides to meet demand
- Guide engagement: Interpret and apply global engagement strategy including the planning and execution of regular guide events
- Guide & Coordinator communications & support
- Ground Operations Quality: ensuring consistent quality of our Guide pool, through regular training, feedback and monitoring.
- Accounting: Guide and Vendor Invoicing and Cash & Ticket distribution and tracking, as well as any other expenses needed to run daily operations
- Carefully monitor and report on market performance and proactively strive to improve our margins, procedures, efficiencies and quality
- Material and Branding: procurement and distribution
- Workflow support for Operations team where volume requires
- Provide Ground support in case of emergency/need/high flux
- Managing workload and performance of the New York Assistant Ground Operations Manager
Cross-team collaboration points:
- Central Operations Team
- Global Guide Department
- Leadership Team
Requirements & Qualifications:
- Minimum 3 years previous experience in tourism either in hiring, coaching, training and managing people or operations and product development
- Excellent organizational & people management skills
- Professionally efficient in all forms of communication
- Dependability, candor, strong work ethic, time management are all pre-requisites
- High attention to detail required
- Strong technical skills, and the ability to learn multiple systems in a fast-paced environment
- Fluency in English
- Familiarity with Microsoft suite, Asana, Slack desired
City Experiences’ passion is to provide amazing experiences on land and water. Our 40-year success through organic growth and acquisitions has resulted in a portfolio of over 25+ brands that welcome upwards of 30 million guests/riders annually. If you’re an enthusiastic team player who thrives in an environment where communication, creativity, and cooperation are encouraged, this may just be the opportunity for you.
The RESPECT Service System embodies City Experiences’ mission, vision, values and operating principles. By creating a company culture that puts RESPECT at its core, we believe it will drive us to achieve our goal of becoming a Global Experiences and Transportation Leader.
The Company is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment against any applicants or employees based upon their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, mental or physical disability, status as a protected veteran, or other characteristics prohibited by applicable law.
Additionally, we encourage all qualified applicants including those with past arrest or conviction records to apply. The Company participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations.
We encourage qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records to apply.