Kew Gardens are currently seeking a Groups & Travel Trade Executive. As part of the Visitor Operations Team, the Groups and Travel Trade Executive role provides exemplary customer service to our group visitors and travel trade clients, acting as their first point of contact within Kew and answering queries, as well as processing telephone and email bookings. The role also offers general administrative support to the Groups and Travel Trade team, the Ticketing team and assistance in representing Kew at trade shows.
Key responsibilities:
- Handle all travel trade and group enquiries and bookings, which includes working with teams from across Kew to bring together the various elements of the group visit on behalf of the client.
- Manage group allocation, booking procedure, payments, coach slots bookings, ticketing and
communications for commercial events (Christmas at Kew). Manage all bookings finance, ensuring group payments are made in a timely manner and logged appropriately. - Manage IT procedures and requirements in relation to groups and travel trade bookings, reporting on errors and suggesting optimisations to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the booking system.
- Maximise group visits and revenue through relationship building with clients and proactive sales, in order to meet annual group admission targets.
- Support the groups and travel trade team when required with budget tracking, invoice control, voucher processing, banking cheques and any other general office administration.
- Effectively manage groups clients’ relationships to ensure customer satisfaction and to realise business growth in number of visits and increase in secondary spend.
- Attend trade shows in conjunction with Travel Trade Sales and Marketing Manager to develop relationships with clients and raise the profile of RBG Kew.
- Employ a deep understanding of the business and the needs of the group travel market to ensure a return on investment for all sales activity.
- As the Travel Trade Sales & Marketing Manager role is often out of the office on sales missions, this role requires a substantial amount of time acting as the lead contact for Groups and Travel Trade at an operational level.
- To champion the importance and improve understanding of groups and travel trade across the organisation.
- Support the Travel Trade & Groups department in the new groups and Travel Trade solution from the ‘Enhancing Visitor Experience’ (EVE) project, in data migration, testing and go-live. Once go-live daily use the system and report any issues.
- Support the Visitor Operations Team with enquiries and bookings for daytime visitors. This includes working with the Ticketing Manager with the administration of Kew’s ticketed activities.
- Manage and maintain operational reports regarding groups and travel trade visits and delivery to key stakeholders.
Key skills & experience:
- Experience in a formal customer service or sales role with experience of working with B2B and B2C clients.
- Proven customer service skills and telephone sales skills to be able to communicate a product or service simply and efficiently. Good relationship management skills.
- Previous office administration experience including expense management, budget tracking, purchase order raising and invoice control. Financially confident and good attention to detail with numerical data.
- Previous experience using reservations / booking system or ticketing system.
- Excellent written and spoken English.
- Excellent interpersonal skills used to develop and maintain good relationships with customers, team members as well as the wider organisation.
- A good sense of organisational culture and relationships.
- Able to work as part of a team and support colleagues as the first point of contact.
- Able to adapt to a variety of tasks and switch between numerical and written based tasks easily and happily.
- Confident working independently with minimal supervision.
- Able to manage own time and deliver work to time and on budget.
- Exceptional customer service skills, particularly with regards to providing customer services via phone and email.
- Experience handling complaints and resolving customer service issues.
- Capable of deputising, representing Groups and Travel Trade, both internally and externally, in the absence of the Travel Trade Sales & Marketing Manager.
- Competency in IT, able to use MS Office programmes i.e. Excel, Word, Outlook.
How to apply:
Please click here to apply for this position.
About Kew Gardens: Kew Gardens is London’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site. Delve into a tropical rainforest in the Palm House and travel through ten climatic zones in the Princess of Wales Conservatory.
