Director of Partnerships

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Develop and implement the strategy for enhancing the company's travel advisor and strategic partnership channel.

• Create annual operating plans, budgets, revenue objectives, and investment priorities.

• Identify and rank partnerships and markets that offer the highest growth potential.

• Monitor channel performance and refine strategies based on revenue, profitability, pipeline, and market opportunities.

• Build and oversee a pipeline of high-value partnership opportunities.

• Cultivate relationships with senior executives, owners, and decision-makers across key organizations.

• Direct partnerships from outreach and business development through to business cases, negotiations, contracting, launching, and ongoing growth.

• Personally manage significant national partnerships and select strategic accounts.

• Develop collaborative business plans, executive reviews, growth strategies, and renewal strategies.

• Establish partner economics involving commissions, marketing, inventory, service, technology, and reporting.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Operations, Product, Inventory, Client Services, Technology, and Marketing to support and scale partnerships.

• Define tools, processes, service standards, reporting, and technology to ensure a robust partner experience.

• Translate partner requirements into internal priorities while ensuring sound economics and operational discipline.

• Set roles between national partnership management and local Business Development activities.

• Equip and mobilize over 30 Business Development Managers to foster local relationships and promote advisor engagement.

• Establish expectations, sales routines, training, and accountability for partner activation.

• Utilize CRM and performance data to enhance activation, conversion, and revenue.

• Develop and manage strategy for conferences, trade shows, partner events, and industry engagements.

• Plan executive engagement, follow-up, and measurement of event ROI.

• Coordinate efforts across Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product, Technology, and other internal teams.

⛳️ Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in U.S. leisure travel sales, strategic partnerships, national accounts, business development, or a closely related field.

• Profound understanding of the U.S. travel advisor ecosystem and established relationships with senior leaders across relevant distribution organizations.

• Proven track record in sourcing, negotiating, launching, and growing national partnerships that yield measurable revenue.

• Strong commercial acumen regarding partner economics, budgets, forecasting, business cases, and revenue growth.

• Experience in working with or mobilizing a distributed field sales organization.

• Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior stakeholders across multiple functions without direct authority.

• Strong CRM discipline and experience in using data to manage pipelines, forecasts, account plans, and performance.

• Experience with HubSpot or Salesforce is preferred.

• Outstanding executive communication, presentation, relationship-building, and negotiation skills.

• Comfortable navigating a fast-paced environment while being both strategic and hands-on.

• Strong ownership mentality with the capability to advance opportunities without waiting for ideal conditions.

• Experience in group travel, escorted tours, river cruises, travel advisor distribution, host agencies or consortia, AAA or affinity organizations, travel booking technology, or travel industry conferences and events is a plus.

• Must reside in the United States.

• Must be a U.S. citizen or Green Card holder.

• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

• Generous vacation and paid time off policies.

• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement.

• Flexible working arrangements.