Job title — Travel Product Manager Job purpose: The purpose of the Travel Product Manager role is to enhance the company's travel offerings by strategically sourcing, negotiating, and managing relationships with various travel suppliers, including hotels, airlines, and other service providers. The role is pivotal in ensuring competitive pricing, high-quality service, and innovative product features to meet and exceed customer expectations. The Travel Product Manager will be responsible for optimizing back-end operations and workflows to ensure efficient and seamless service delivery, while also maintaining regulatory compliance and industry standards. Job Summary: As a Travel Product Manager at our client, you will take charge of developing and managing our travel products portfolio by establishing strong partnerships with travel suppliers and service providers. Your role involves a deep understanding of the travel market dynamics, direct negotiations with suppliers to secure the best rates and terms, and ensuring a competitive edge for our offerings. You will play a critical role in defining the operational processes that underpin a superior customer experience, from booking to the completion of travel. Collaborating with various internal teams, you will drive enhancements in our travel products, aiming for higher customer conversion rates and retention through continuous innovation and improvement. Your responsibilities will also include staying abreast of industry trends and competitor strategies, ensuring our travel products remain best-in-class. The role demands a blend of strategic vision, operational excellence, and a customer-centric approach to drive the overall success of our travel offerings. Key responsibilities: • Identify, negotiate and onboard travel suppliers (hotels, airlines, transfers, activities, holiday packages, etc.), direct contracting with hotels, Airline NDC fares, Insurance companies, payment gateway partners and other such suppliers. • Suppliers can be GDS, travel aggregators, DMCs or even directly with partners • Manage and ascertain IATA accreditation for company • Get the best commercial terms, including extended credit period wherever possible • Make sure that supplier is fully compliant with government and financial regulations • Ensure proper contracting is closed with well defined SLAs, incentives and penalties and offer milestones • Coordination with suppliers for matters requiring escalation or attention • Responsible for industry and competition tracking o Rate parity and benchmarking o Identify improved service providers and onboarding them o Identify trends in customer workflows and onboarding and adopt best practices in those • Responsible for contracting payment gateways and ensuring their service delivery • Analyzing financial performance data across bookings, suppliers, etc to ensure margin optimization across suppliers. • Coordinate with multiple stakeholders internally at CC for constantly enhancing user experience and revenue generation from the platform including providing new business requirements / user stories, etc. • Responsible for ensuring a high quality user experience and driving the travel product strategy. • Act as a bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders by ensuring the technical feature development and strategy are scoped to satisfy the short- and long-term needs of the business. • Play an active role in testing out new features / functionalities as a business user Requirements Key Skills: 1. Negotiation and Contracting Skills: Ability to negotiate favourable terms with travel suppliers, including hotels and airlines, and to finalize contracts with clear SLAs, incentives, and penalties. 2. Supplier Relationship Management: Proficient in managing relationships with various travel suppliers, including GDS, travel aggregators, DMCs, and direct partners. 3. Regulatory Compliance: Knowledge of relevant government and financial regulations affecting the travel industry, including IATA accreditation. 4. Analytical Skills: Capable of analyzing financial performance data to optimize margins across suppliers and improve operational efficiency. 5. Project Management: Strong project management skills to coordinate with multiple stakeholders, manage timelines, and ensure the successful delivery of travel products and features. 6. Customer Experience Focus: A strong focus on delivering high-quality user experiences and the ability to identify and implement improvements in customer workflows and interfaces. 7. Innovation and Trend Analysis: Keen ability to scan the competitive landscape, identify trends, and innovate to maintain and enhance the competitiveness of LC offerings. 8. Technical Liaison: Ability to act as an intermediary between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring that technical developments align with business needs Experience Requirements: 1. Industry Experience: Proven experience in the travel industry, particularly in product management, supplier management, or a related field. 2. Supplier Negotiation: Demonstrated experience in negotiating and contracting with travel suppliers, including direct contracting with hotels and airlines. 3. Product Development: Experience in identifying, testing, and rolling out new features or functions to improve the product and operational efficiency. 4. Stakeholder Management: Experience working with multiple stakeholders within an organization to drive product strategy and improve customer conversion and retention Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): 1. Supplier Acquisition and Management: Number of new suppliers onboarded, quality of supplier relationships, and compliance with SLAs. 2. Commercial Terms Improvement: Improvement in commercial terms with suppliers, including discounts, extended credit periods, and margin optimization. 3. Customer Experience Metrics: Customer satisfaction scores, customer conversion rates, and customer retention rates. 4. Operational Efficiency: Reduction in manual processes through automation, decreased time-toresolution for customer and supplier issues, and overall improvement in back-end operational workflows. 5. Product Innovation and Competitiveness: Number of new features or functions implemented, competitive benchmarking metrics, and rate parity achievements. 6. Financial Performance: Revenue growth from travel products, margin improvement across suppliers, and cost savings achieved through negotiations and operational efficiencies.