Summary:
This role is instrumental in building travel advisor distribution and national partnerships into a major growth channel. The Senior Director will own its strategy, budget, operating plan and performance across host agencies, consortia, national and regional agency networks, AAA organizations, and other priority partners.
This needs to be someone very senior, with extensive experience in the Travel Advisor industry with business development. This is not only a salesperson, is a channel builder.
They need to own budget, coordinate multidisciplinary scope across many areas of the company, understand technology, inventory, operations, marketing, business planning.
They also must have meaningful relationships in the travel agent consortium industry in our group travel niche. What Some Responsibilities Entail: Set multi-year strategy, annual operating plan, and quarterly cross-functional priorities, with clear targets, investments, milestones, and owners. Build the annual channel budget and own revenue, contribution profit, and spending performance against plan. Build and manage the priority partnership and key-account pipeline; lead executive outreach, business cases, proposals, negotiation, contracting, and launch. Own the channel-readiness roadmap. Partner with Operations, Product and Inventory, Client Services, and Technology to establish the advisor experience, booking and customer-support flows, inventory processes, internal service-level standards, tracking, and reporting needed to scale. Establish clear rules of engagement: this role owns national relationships and selected key accounts, while BDMs manage local relationships and activation within partner networks.
What We Are Looking For:
10 or more years of experience in U.S. leisure travel sales, national accounts, strategic partnerships, or business development.
Deep knowledge of the U.S. travel advisor ecosystem and established, current relationships with senior leaders across major distribution organizations.
Strong commercial judgment and fluency in partner economics, business cases, annual planning, budgets, and forecasting.
Disciplined use of CRM and performance data to manage pipelines, forecasts, and action plans; experience with HubSpot or Salesforce is preferred.
Familiarity with group travel, escorted tours, river cruises, or advisor booking technology is preferred.
A complete job description for full disclosure of job duties and requirements will be provided to applicants who qualify and are chosen for this role.
