Travel Advisor, Senior Manager

Summary

Bell & Bly Travel is in the early stages of rapid growth, so this position will be ever evolving and changing. We are looking for someone who is highly detail oriented, a master of checklists (Asana anyone?) operations minded, and obsessed with customer service. This is a hands on role and you’ll be responsible for client documents, operational tasks, researching destinations and making sure our clients enjoy trips of a lifetime!

An A-Player for the Travel Coordinator Role is someone who embodies the following: honesty/integrity, ability to learn quickly, extreme attention to detail, proactivity, ability to prioritize, efficiency, calmness under pressure, enthusiasm, creativity, strong work ethic, great communication skills, and openness to feedback. 

A-players are always looking for ways to make the business better, to make the client experience better, and to learn and grow to make themselves better. They know how to proactively get things done, are excited to take on new projects, and are willing to work on things outside their job scope when needed. Last but not least, they know how to ask for help when needed and are committed to making Bell & Bly Travel a fun, healthy, exciting place to work.

About Us/Who We Are

Bell & Bly Travel is a travel firm set up to inspire and enable people to travel more broadly. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs, executives, families, and couples weave unique experiences throughout their lives. Our mantra is fewer, better clients and we help these clients with all their leisure travel needs.

 Bell & Bly Travel is affiliated with Brownell Travel, the oldest and most prestigious travel advisory in the United States. Through that affiliation, Bell & Bly is also Virtuoso and is in partnership with many of the top brands in travel like Four Seasons, Belmond, and Abercrombie & Kent. We also recently won Virtuoso’s Most Innovative Travel Advisor, out of 12,000 travel advisors worldwide, a huge honor in the industry. 

Though we love all kinds of travel, our business model is such that we exclusively focus on high-end experiences and luxury hotels. This focus has allowed us to become one of the fastest growing firms affiliated with Brownell. 

We also recently set up a scholarship to help support low income students to study abroad. The faster we grow, the more we can add to this scholarship and promote travel to younger generations!

The team generally works with in ± 4 hours of US Central Standard Time. We will work out your hours based on your time zone and our needs. We do have a preference for team members closer to CST (Western Hemisphere) but flexible for the right person. 

The founder, Sarah, is an experienced entrepreneur and has had a widely varying career path prior to founding Bell & Bly including finance, investing, and tech startups. She is passionate about mentoring new members of our team.

Last but not least, our core values are important to us and should be to anyone who joins the team:

• Love our Customers - I always do what is best for my clients and put herculean effort into surprising and delighting them along the way. This feeling extends to our partners and our team members.

• Always be Learning - I am constantly traveling and learning all there is to know about new destinations. I spend time up front learning about my clients’ unique travel style and bucket list dreams. I help clients have amazing experiences on the ground that expand their knowledge of the world.

• Cultivate Adventure - I help clients gently push the boundaries of their comfort zones and use my deep industry relationships to craft amazing adventures and experiences that cannot be found online.

About The Role

Bell & Bly Travel is undergoing rapid growth, so this position will be ever evolving and changing. This makes it a great opportunity for those who can handle a multitude of tasks and some ambiguity. This role is not for you if you are a clock puncher. The Travel Advisor position is a pivotal one in our company. You will be responsible for customer service across our entire process from getting to know and onboarding new clients, to managing the trip planning and execution, to managing feedback after a trip, and reselling existing clients for future trips. 

Primary Responsibilities

• Sales 

  • Conducting initial discover calls with new incoming clients

  • Retargeting our top clients for future trips

  • Managing “Client Experience Portfolios” for existing clients and making sure we’re helping them plan proactively into the future 

  • Conducting follow up discover calls with existing clients for new trips 

  • In this role, Travel Advisor will be responsible for key metrics related to discover call conversion metrics and client retention

• Client Service

  • Being our front line in terms of higher level client communication. While the designers and coordinators communicate directly with clients on the day to day items, the Travel Advisor would be the point person for any phone calls the designer needs assistance on or calls where clients need true advice on destinations, trip alternatives, or a higher level touch 

  • Develop and deploy ways to surprise/delight clients through the planning process

  • Ensuring that clients are responded to within 24 business hours by the team and managing timeline expectations for clients

  • Continually improving our travel design process to improve client experience

  • Deeply getting to know our clients through discover calls, reviewing all past client data such as feedback forms, etc.

  • The Travel Advisor should expect to spend a significant amount of time on the phone with clients (or partners as needed)

• Travel Design 

  • The Travel Advisor will also act as a backup to the Travel Designers, i.e. answering destination questions, being a sounding board, making sure no major deadlines are missed, etc. 

  • Depending on team capacity and vacation schedules, the Travel Advisor will also need to be comfortable directly designing some trips directly. 

• Travel Coordination 

  • The travel Advisor should be comfortable jumping in to help with coordinator tasks when needed due to capacity, an urgent request, coordinators on vacation, etc. 

  • Travel Advisor will be responsible for being the “Senior” person on the team handling emergency situations for clients whenever they arise - though note that we have processes in place to keep these types of situations to a very small minimum

  • Advisor will also be responsible for creating a process for managing emergency situations for the best outcomes to the client and minimal impact to team work/life balance

• Continual Learning 

  • Learn by researching, attending webinars, setting calls with partners - required 4 per month 

  • Institutionalize knowledge by documenting learnings, writing trip reports, etc

  • Attend trade shows when needed

  • After one year of service, Travel Advisors will be eligible to travel on fam/educational trips at the company’s cost  

  • Mentoring designers and coordinators on destinations, partners, and client service

  • Tracking designer and coordinator learning KPIs

• Process Dedication & Improvement

  • Continuously updating trip planning checklist to reduce errors/improve efficiency

  • Regularly and effectively using team tools: Asana, Toggl, Google Suite, etc.

  • Proactively looking for ways to improve everything from client service to team morale to partner relations

  • Manage and track assigned KPIs and report monthly

• Team Development

  • Manage the team of designers and coordinators, ensuring world class customer service and healthy work life balance

  • Mentor existing team members and train new team members

  • Hire new team members as needed to support the growth of the company

Working Style

• This is a remote position, working directly with the the owner/CEO and managing the Travel Designers, Travel Coordinators, and Sales Coordinator 

• Most work will be assigned digitally via team management software but you should be available for calls when needed during regular business hours ~once per week, Central Standard Time. We do have a preference for time zones +/- 4 hours from CST

• You will also be expected to have weekly 1:1 calls with any of your direct reports

• We will establish a regular cadence for check in calls – on these calls we’ll catch up on tasks for the week, share feedback, and brainstorm

• Everyone on the team is expected to work ~ 40 hours per week. Exactly which hours those are, we’re flexible on as long as client needs are getting met at a high standard. 

• We do not pay hourly - we salary A players who are here to get done what needs to get done. That said, we track hours and work to make sure no one is getting overworked. If they are, we adjust workloads, reduce sales, or hire more! Some weeks emergencies may pop up and you may work more than 40 hours. Other weeks things may slow down and you’ll work a little less. Expect the average to be 40. 

Training

• We have systemized a lot of our training so your first week will be consuming a lot of videos we’ve made, reading manuals to understand our process

• You’ll work hand in hand with Sarah to deeply understand the role of Advisor when working with our clients and get 1:1 sales training

• After the initial week of training, training will be as we go - we believe learning our style and then implementing it is better for retention

Growth Opportunities

• This truly depends on the candidate, their skill level, and their interests, as well as Bell & Bly’s success in growing market share

• Areas for growth could include title and salary increases. A Travel Advisor who shows great potential for management and operations in addition to client service may be considered in the years to come for GM, COO, or some day President.

Who You Are

• For this senior role you should have 5+ years of travel industry experience, directly working in a client facing role. 

• You should have a very good understanding of the major travel destinations around the world and be an experienced traveler yourself. 

• You should love interacting with clients and have a great deal of empathy for them and for their unique situations. Being caring and wanting the best for our clients makes us the best! 

• You should love being on the phone and building relationships

• You should have great people skills and empathy for our clients, partners, and fellow teammates

• You should be excited to manage a great team of Designers and Coordinators 

• You should be able to adapt to our Bell & Bly Travel style - early on we’ll give lots of feedback on details such as the types of photos we like, the type of language we like to use, etc. Even these “subjective” pieces are important to a great product. 

• You should be operations minded – thinking about streamlining processes and making the client experience better at each step along the way

• You should have excellent English communication skills – especially written, but also over the phone 

• You should be great with English grammar, writing, and creating clean and attractive documents for clients that elevate our brand

• You should be highly task oriented and have a great work ethic - we want A players who are committed to getting things right and completed on time 

• You should have integrity and honesty and be able to maintain the highest standards of confidentiality

• You should be obsessed with customer service – we advise our clients on how to spend their most valuable asset, their time. Most people have such limited time and budget to put towards this, so we strive to get it right and make it memorable!

• You should get along well with our team and have fun! Life is too short to work with a team you don’t like! 

• In your video or in the section on “anything else we should know”, please tell us what’s #1 on your bucket list and why

• You should not be scared to suggest new, faster, or better ways of doing things! I am often too busy to dedicate time to this and always appreciate the team’s input.

• You should be clear and concise in your communication with the rest of the team, and appreciate that we will do the same for you. (i.e. let’s be straight forward, no BS, this is not an organization that is interested in politics)

• Skills

  • Management

  • Sales and customer service

  • Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF

  • Axus

  • Asana and project management tools  

  • Excellent written and spoken English - Native speaker required

  • Bonus: GDS experience 

What’s in it for you?

• Full but Flexible schedule - work from home, a coffee shop, wherever! As long as you’re putting in the hours and getting high quality work done, it doesn’t matter to us (so long as you’re available for calls when we schedule and get back to clients/partners in a timely manner).

• Discover the world - experience the travel industry firsthand and quite literally spend your working hours learning about the world

• Promote tolerance – it is our true belief that travel promotes tolerance and makes our world a better place. We help clients travel more, raise global citizens, and learn about the rest of the world

• Help grow a business from the ground up – Bell & Bly is one of the fastest growing travel advisories in the USA and we need help to grow even faster

• Travel – if Bell & Bly maintains or grows from current revenue targets, Travel Designers and Advisors will become eligible for certain travel related perks (ranging from hotel discounts to fully paid scouting trips and team trips)