Trade Marketing & Community Manager

The Position

Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ is seeking a highly motivated Trade Marketing & Community Manager to join our Global Sales team. This role is responsible for leading our travel trade marketing and communications strategy, managing our global travel trade communities and preferred travel partners, and overseeing our preferred agency programme, withIN. Working closely with internal teams and external partners, the role will drive engagement, strengthen relationships and generate incremental business through SLH's reservation channels, with a particular focus on the Travel Trade Hub, Reservations & Customer Care desk and GDS.

The brand enjoys an excellent position in the global luxury travel market and this role requires a good understanding of the luxury travel trade landscape and all luxury consortia. The ideal candidate will have a strong sales and marketing background, property-level or regional sales & marketing experience (min. 3 years), and excellent communication and presentation skills. 

The Trade Marketing & Community Manager will be responsible for the following initiatives but not limited to: 

• Manage and develop relationships with SLH's global travel trade communities and strategic partners, including Virtuoso, Serandipians, Internova, Signature Travel Network, TAG, Navan and American Express.
• Lead and evolve the SLH withIN Preferred Agency Programme, managing relationships with both hotel partners and travel agencies while driving engagement, growth and programme development.
• Identify, develop and implement marketing opportunities and strategic partnerships across preferred partners, luxury leisure agencies and corporate travel management companies to increase brand visibility and drive revenue.
• Develop and execute the global travel trade communications strategy, creating an annual marketing calendar and delivering engaging newsletters, bulletins, promotional campaigns, seasonal offers, destination features and other trade communications that strengthen engagement with the travel agent community.
• Work closely with the Marketing team to identify opportunities to adapt consumer marketing campaigns, content and initiatives for the travel trade audience, ensuring consistent brand messaging and maximising campaign impact across channels.
• Own and manage travel trade content across all dedicated platforms, including the Travel Trade Hub, continually enhancing content, user experience and engagement to increase conversions and generate room nights.
• Create, manage and maintain all travel trade sales and marketing collateral, including presentations, brochures, flyers and other supporting materials, ensuring all assets remain current and aligned with the SLH brand.
• Manage the relationship with external creative and design agencies, overseeing the production and delivery of all design-led sales and marketing collateral for the travel trade.
• Develop initiatives that drive awareness and bookings through the Reservations & Customer Care team, working closely with the R&CC team to maximize conversion from travel trade activity.
• Maintain an accurate and up-to-date travel agent database within Salesforce, ensuring data integrity and effective audience segmentation.
• Monitor campaign performance, partnership activity and programme engagement through reporting, dashboards and analytics, providing insights and recommendations to optimise future marketing activity.
• Collaborate closely with Global Sales, Marketing, Social Media, PR, Reservations and other internal stakeholders to deliver integrated campaigns and ensure the travel trade remains a key focus across the organization.
• Responsible for managing the Trade Sales & Marketing Executive, with direct reporting responsibility.

Reporting Lines

Vice President of Sales, EMEA (London) with a dotted line to Global Director of Marketing to ensure brand consistency, alignment with global marketing strategy and governance across all trade marketing and community communications. Day-to-day management, objectives and priorities remain within the Sales function. Will work closely with the marketing team and sales directors in EMEA, APAC and The Americas and the corporate sales team in New York.

Required Qualifications and Experiences

• Minimum 3 years’ manager-level experience  in travel marketing, gained within a luxury hotel brand, hotel group, high-end travel agency or luxury travel network.
• Tertiary qualification in Marketing or Travel & Tourism or relevant degree or diploma in hospitality 
• Very good knowledge of the world’s leading travel agencies and consortia 
• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and preferably Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Cvent and Sabre/SynXis.
• Adobe Creative Cloud ability and knowledge of CMS editing (website) and Google analytics reporting 
• Highly organised and self-motivated
• Creative and enthusiastic with a willingness to share new ideas
• Team player with a strong ability to self-manage
• Excellent communication skills (both verbal and written) and comfortable liaising with hotel owners, general managers and high-end clients
• Ability to perform assigned duties with attention to detail, accuracy, courtesy, cooperativeness and work with a minimum of supervision
• Passionate about travel and people, with a keen interest in the latest trends, innovations, and developments shaping the travel industry.
• Fluent in English; proficiency in Spanish, French or Italian would be an advantage
• At times must be flexible with hours due to the location and time zone of some colleagues and partners
• Based in London, operating on a hybrid schedule with 50% office attendance.
• Some international travel (sometimes including Sat/Sun)

Suitable Applicants

Should email a CV and a cover letter telling us why you’re the person for the job to: Director of Sales, EMEA, Carlotta D’Innella at: carlotta.dinnella@slh.com.

Location

London based, hybrid office/home.

Effective Date

With immediate effect.

Who we are

Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ (SLH) matches independently minded guests with independently spirited hotels. The diverse collection of 700+ hotels in more than 100 countries around the world includes everything from cutting edge design hotels and city centre sanctuaries to historic country mansions and remote private islands – all SLH hotels are consistently different, however, they are all united by the fact that they offer the best locations, highest quality, personalised service and a truly authentic way to discover a destination.

We turned the luxury boutique hotel into a phenomenon back in 1990 and since then we’ve gone to every major capital, taken the path less travelled and journeyed to the edge of the map to seek out and select the distinctive, the diverse and the downright delightful.