Travel Trade Lead, West Midlands Growth Company

West Midlands Growth Company is seeking a new Travel Trade Lead to join the tourism team to drive the trade travel strategy for the region and leading major travel trade projects. There will also be opportunities for business travel to Australia, Canada and India to build relationships with key trade and press in-market and represent the region.

Reporting directly to the Tourism Industry Manager, the Travel Trade Lead will be managing the travel trade engagement and events workstream for the tourism programme. The ideal candidate is responsible for ensuring the regions’ products are travel trade-ready to market, including helping businesses to shape and developing new products with knowledge of the target market in mind, and evolving sustainable relationships with appropriate distribution channels to ensure that the products are picked up by key agents and operators. The candidate will also be required to work with both the internal team and external partners such as VisitBritain to ensure the successful delivery of these events.

Key activities include:

• Overall project management for the travel trade engagement and events workstream – including board reports and presentations
• Stakeholder partnership engagement and management for all activities to ensure all key audiences are kept up to date and engaged
• Managing procurement processes including tendering for services to deliver the required project activity, managing these contracts and working alongside the contracted service where necessary to manage project-specific deliverables
• Delivering a product development programme to bring new travel-trade ready product to market, supporting businesses and using industry knowledge to guide their development of appropriate product
• Managing business engagement, recruitment to the product development programme and support activities
• Creating itineraries and building relationships with DMCs or overseas tour operators/agents
• Being responsible for external events i.e. sales missions for the travel trade workstream and ensuring these are delivered in line with the programmes overall branding and agreed messaging
• Holding press visits and familiarisation trips for key agents and operators from target markets
• Reporting against key milestones, deliverables and outputs, providing evidence as required by DCMS and WMCA to receive the funding, as requested by the Programme Team

The ideal candidate will:

• Have proven ability to build strong, cross-functional relationships to ensure a collaborative approach and drive for combined programme activity, e.g. sales/trade missions
• Have proven experience of working closely with internal teams to achieve successful outcomes in the following areas: marketing and communications, research, monitoring and evaluation
• Proven knowledge of the tourism industry
• Demonstrate proven ability to meet deadlines across multiple projects
• Be proactive in taking new responsibilities and seeks out opportunities to learn new skills

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL JOB DESCRIPTION AND PERSON SPECIFICATION.

Please also note that West Midlands Growth Company are considering part-time applicants/consultants

HOW TO APPLY

Please apply through Gleeson Recruitment’s website and attach your CV by midnight, Wednesday 10th March 2021. For any further enquiry, please contact Jess Brannigan via her email.

West Midlands Growth Company: The West Midlands Growth Company aims to boost tourism to the heart of England – an area which covers the West Midlands region and is home to favourite visitor destinations such as Birmingham, Coventry and Stratford-upon-Avon. Not only does the region have great experiences for visitors, with many centred around its unique network of waterways, it is also hosting some key international events over the coming years. These include the historic city of Coventry being the UK’s City of Culture and the buzzing metropolis of Birmingham hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2022.