Senior Category Manager (Rocket Travel by Agoda)

About the Role

Rocket Travel by Agoda is the strategic partnerships arm of Agoda, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG). Rocket Travel by Agoda partners with global brands to bring their customers rewarding and engaging travel experiences that deliver value, maximize rewards, and build customer loyalty for partners’ brands.

Rocket Travel by Agoda is looking for a Sr. Manager, Supply Strategy & Hotel Programs to join our growing Commercial team. In this role, you’ll own the strategic build out, optimization and management of the hotel programs offered to our white label partners. This will require collaboration across Booking Holdings brands, internal Rocket Travel by Agoda teams and our white label partners.

Rocket Travel by Agoda is a place where you:

• Work with teammates across the globe who have a passion for finding solutions backed by data and strategy.
• Take moonshots by going above and beyond to hit and exceed our goals as a team.
• Rise together by working collectively to elevate ourselves, supporting one another and catching each other when we fall.
• Own decisions and take action that can be implemented in a matter of days (or hours).
• Receive a competitive compensation package, including bonus, 401k with match, flexible vacation time, parental leave benefits, health, and dental insurance.
  • Total Compensation is based on experience
• Can have a flexible work schedule. We are seeking a candidate who can work a hybrid schedule in our Chicago West Loop office where teammates can connect in real-time.
• Share your passion for travel with equally adventurous and spontaneous teammates.
• Work within Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) group of companies to create travel solutions that build customer loyalty for partners around the world.

As a Sr. Category Manager (Supply Strategy & Hotel Programs) at Rocket Travel, you will:

• Spend half of your time supporting the optimization of Rocket’s hotel, flight, car, and insurance supply:
  • Dive deep into data to analyze supply trends, and use your insights to identify supply strategy opportunities, size them, and present them internally to relevant teams such as product, commercial partnerships, legal, and finance. You may also take the lead on developing and executing a plan to bring those opportunities to life.
    • Own select Rocket supplier partnerships for car, hotel, and insurance. You will build relationships, meet regularly to discuss opportunities and challenges, and work together to hit KPIs.
    • Work with Rocket’s Customer Experience Group to understand drivers of supply complaint trends across hotel and car verticals. You will report out and then act on insights in collaboration with other teams, identifying practical, scalable solutions.
    • Set and measure your supply initiatives against quantifiable targets, which you can then evaluate post-launch. Report out on your results regularly and use these insights to drive improvements to strategy and/or execution.
  • Support the launch of new White Label partners for key supply verticals. Ensuring each new partner’s unique supply requirements are planned for and ready at launch.
  • Learn our hotel rate distribution system and be the go-to contact for when Rocket needs to execute rate distribution strategy changes.
  • Be the point person for resolution of supply escalations from both suppliers and white label partners. This means triaging issues accordingly to find root causes, size/impact, and options for scalable, practical, long-term resolution.
• Spend half of your time optimizing and scaling our luxury hotel collection portfolio including:
  • Establish hotel collection KPIs, continuously analyze program performance for a variety of metrics across brands and regions and use performance analysis insights to drive tangible program improvements. In support of this broader goal, you will:
    • Encourage participation and solicit program feedback from target chains, management groups and independent properties in collaboration with our Priceline or Agoda counterparts and/or our partner contacts.
    • Build relationships with target chains, management groups and independent properties. You’ll leverage these relationships and negotiate commercial terms of hotels’ participation including margins, promotional and marketing assets.
    • Work with hotel connectivity and market management teams, as well as Rocket Travel product team to ensure optimal rate and availability display, and efficient program onboarding.
    • Use your creativity and insight to help define how we optimize, manage the programs internally, and differentiate the programs externally to our prospects and partners.
  • Collaborate with white label partners to market the programs to end customers and drive bookings within the platform. This includes pitching the program to new white label partners.
  • Generate program reporting related to bookings, pricing, availability, ranking and property conversion. Define a process for distribution of program performance reporting and communication to internal and external stakeholders (including participating hotels and white label partners).
• Be scrappy. We’re a small team and often collaborate across different roles. Some projects may not be completely defined, so we value resourcefulness, adaptability, and a willingness to learn as we drive results together.

About you:

• You have 7+ years of relevant experience, preferably in B2B2C, supply management, travel and/or hotel programs.
• You are an autonomous worker with a bias to action, driving productivity and progress with the program.
• You are an outstanding written and verbal communicator, able to synthesize complex information into key takeaways for internal and external collaborators.
• You are highly organized, and comfortable managing multiple priorities simultaneously across different parts of an organization.
• You are comfortable leading meetings and presenting to key stakeholders, leadership, and external partner stakeholders, including the executive C-suite level.
• You always put the customer front and center. Customers can be a traveler, partner, or even a colleague. You ensure a focus centered around solving pain points.
• You have strong skills with key business tools across Microsoft Office, Google Sheets, Docs, and Slides.
• You are goal-oriented and understand business objectives. You establish goals for yourself, your supply partners and internal counterparts. In negotiations, you understand how to make tradeoffs and work to create the best deal for all parties.
• You have a curious mind and are always seeking to understand. In terms of your professional development, you have a growth mindset, are comfortable soliciting thoughts from others, and are curious to learn from a spectrum of perspectives.
• Studies show that women and people from underrepresented groups often only apply if they meet all the requirements. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles

There are a variety of factors that go into determining a salary range, including but not limited to external market benchmark data, geographic location, and years of experience sought/required. In addition to a competitive base salary, roles are eligible to be considered for an annual bonus.

The base range for the Chicago-metro area is $105,000 - 158,000.

About Rocket Travel by Agoda

Rocket Travel by Agoda is dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace where everyone has the opportunity to reach new heights in their career. We encourage all applicants looking to expand their knowledge working alongside talented, dedicated colleagues to apply to our team.

Note on general employment requirements

Candidates should be authorized to accept employment in the US from any employer, should be willing to start within three weeks of accepting an offer, and should be able to work the same daily working hours as our Chicago office.

Equal Opportunity Employer

At Rocket Travel by Agoda, we pride ourselves on being companies represented by people of all different backgrounds and orientations. We prioritize attracting diverse talent and cultivating an inclusive environment that encourages collaboration and innovation. Employment at Rocket Travel by Agoda is based solely on a person’s merit and qualifications. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities regardless of sex, age, race, color, national origin, religion, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, citizenship, veteran or military status, and other legally protected characteristics. We will keep your application on file so that we can consider you for future vacancies and you can always ask to have your details removed from the file. For more details, please read Rocket Travel by Agoda’s privacy policy. Find our applicant policy here: https://www.rockettravel.com/privacy-policy

A Final Word:

To all recruitment agencies: Rocket Travel by Agoda does not accept third party resumes. Please do not send resumes to our jobs alias, employees or any other organization location. Rocket Travel by Agoda is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.