Director of Air Operations

Travel Edge is the largest luxury-focused travel agency in North America with over 750 advisors, planners and travel experts specializing in Leisure, Corporate & Events travel. At Travel Edge we believe in the power of travel, our people, the technology they use, and giving back to the communities in which we operate. Our luxury advisors are at the core of everything we do and specialize in air, hotel, cruise, tours, and VIP travel, where our Corporate Travel Consultants are the experts in providing tailored, full-service travel management solutions to our business clients. 

The Director of Air Operations will manage air operations for Travel Edge Trip Arc.  You will be responsible for air ticketing support group for a $600MM top line enterprise that will ultimately grow to over $1B.  Multiple companies and multiple branch locations will be supported by your team, and a growing user base of over 700 travel industry professionals.  Close involvement in evolution of our in house developed reservation system ADX ($14MM invested to date) will be a requirement.

The Director of Air Operations position will architect, build and manage ongoing operations of the centralized air ticketing support team at Travel Edge, and will be a key resource on air related tactical and strategic initiatives.  Key attributes for success are problem solving abilities, travel industry and travel technology domain knowledge, and experience building scalable teams/processes through service management methodologies. 

Essential Job Functions

• Build and manage air support and ticketing center of excellence servicing multiple agencies, affiliates and independent contractors with diverse process requirements in multiple ARC and multiple GDS environment.  Drive share and volume according to set business rules to facilitate meeting company targets with suppliers.  Ensure fee for service structure is documented and fees applied by ticketing agents in PNR accounting lines.
• Measure business performance against plan and identify corrective action. Monitor achievement of performance targets that drive key business results.
• Analyze KPIs such as ticket issuance time, error rate, SLA performance, and team productivity. Prepare executive-level reports and make data-driven decisions for resource planning and budget forecasting.
• Manage a team of air support professionals including hiring, team building, goal setting, performance management, and mentoring. Successfully motivate and empower staff and contractors in the optimal performance of their tasks and responsibilities.
• Market-share Optimization – Operationalize the use of agreements using GDS and our in house technology (Contract Management Facility and Commission Optimization Service) and become expert on these tools.
• Contract Management – ensure that all upfront and backend contracts are loaded correctly in company systems with a goal of obtaining optimum performance to meet market share and contract targets.
• Provide backup support to team on operational processes like, missed commission report, queue monitoring, debit memo research, monthly KPI reports, favors and waivers use.
• Air support – Provide front-line support for answering questions regarding upgrades, air contract interpretation questions and monitoring use of soft-dollars.  Support air team members on complex transactions (exchanges/refunds/etc)
• Act as escalation point on operational issues and forge productive relationships with airline account managers.
• Work closely with TripArc R&D group to refine automations (e.g. Auto-ticketing, auto-schedule change) in our in house developed reservation platform ADX.  Drive improvement through defect tracking KPIs.
• Proficiency with Sabre or related GDS systems (Apollo, Amadeus, Worldspan) to ensure full knowledge and understanding of the air sales process.
• Maintain customer satisfaction with service management, knowledge and process management. Serve the needs of the client/employee via incident management, problem management reporting, and scope verification and change control.

Qualifications

• Extensive working experience with a retail travel company environment.
• Ability to plan and deliver projects with 3 month to 1 year timelines.
• Able to work autonomously on high pressure projects whilst managing multiple activities.
• Proven ability to bring systematic, mathematical, analytical approach to problem solving.
• Ability to exercise decision making with moderate level of risk and ambiguity – ability to make complex decisions for which there may be no set procedures based on systematic analysis, experience and judgment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including presentation skills and an ability to communicate at the highest executive levels in the organization.
• Strong leadership capabilities including the ability to mobilize the right people in the organization to get things done.
• Upbeat personality, team player, self-starter (able to work in lean environment with autonomy) and communicate with multiple constituents in a diverse management team.
• Demonstrated aptitude for learning new technologies.
• Strong Sabre with one or more GDS (Amadeus, Apollo, or Worldspan) a requirement.
• Knowledge of travel industry document delivery tools and related support and configuration (Trip Case, Virtually There, and/or Cornerstone) a requirement. 
• Familiarity with industry consortia and related tools and resources like Virtuoso Composer, cruise line websites, etc. an asset.
• Experience with Air contract interpretation and translating legal language to process rules.

We are committed to providing employment accommodation in accordance with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. If you require accommodation due to a disability at any stage of our hiring process, please advise us when completing your application.

We thank all candidates for their interest however only those selected for an interview will be contacted.