This position reports directly to the SVP, Travel & Chief Legal Officer, Travel.

The VP of Operations, Travel provides leadership and direction to the Travel department to assist in the attainment of departmental financial goals.  Develops, interprets, and implements complex financial and accounting concepts, or techniques for financial planning and control by performing the duties and responsibilities described below. 

Primary Responsibilities:

• Provide leadership and direction to the Travel department including Reservations, Meetings and Events, Billing, Inventory Sales and Hospitality Solutions to help deliver profitable growth and attainment of key financial metrics (e.g., EBITDA and Gross Profit).

• Financial Management of the Travel department including but not limited to the following:
  
  
  
  • Prepares with SVP the budgeted, actual and forecasted financial results of these departments.
  
  
  • Work with Travel Management to compile the annual Travel department’s budgets.
    
    
    
    • Analyze the financial results of this department to recommend potential improvements to revenues, profit margin, expenses and ultimately EBITDA.
    
    
    • Responsible for the review, preparation and distribution of all departmental financial reports such as:
      
      
      
      • Weekly departmental tracking reports
      
      
      • Bi-weekly staff meeting tracking reports
      
      
      • Monthly P&L’s with all related adjustments
      
      
      • Billing tracking and status reports
      
      
      • Vendor payable tracking and status reports
      
      
      • Trade inventory asset and liability status reports
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Serve as a liaison to the Finance department
      
      
      
      • Financial Management of all Trade inventory positions to include but not limited to the following:
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Review and distribute Travel inventory reports of all trade inventories and liabilities to designated members of the Meetings and Reservations departments on a periodic basis
    
    
    • Identify slow moving or expired trade positions and recommend course of action
    
    
    • Become conversant with the particulars involved in each trade position
    
    
    • Identify and recommend improvements in the workflow process related to trade deal approval, setup and usage
      
      
      
      • Oversee all aspects of the Travel Billing division
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Meet regularly with appropriate Travel staff to determine areas of improvement in the billing process
    
    
    • Monitor billing accuracy and status
    
    
    • Troubleshoot various billing problems
    
    
    • Establish billing process with new clients
    
    
    • Primary contact for vendor payable questions
    
    
    • Manage vendor payable process and special payment requests
      
      
      
      • Learn, utilize and become conversant in all primary and feeder systems utilized to perform the day-to-day operations in the Travel department.  Troubleshoot systems issues as they arise and recommend changes or improvements as needed.
      
      
      • Serve as functional lead and work as liaison with the IT, Legal and Finance departments for the POWS Lite system conversion.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    •  Create hospitality cross purchase policies, procedures and systems; disseminate appropriate information to Active’s Finance and Legal departments; provide client and vendors with appropriate information.  I.e., Finance will require cross purchase documentation and hotel inventory pricing support; Legal will require support for contractual buy-back obligations; Clients will require support for hotel purchases in accordance with contract; Vendors will require reconciliations of Active’s trade credit purchases.
    
    
    • Work with Legal and IT to automate purchase process for both clients and vendors.
      
      
      
      • Work with clients and other departments to maintain a positive working relationship which ensures that relevant financial reporting needs are fulfilled; in the case of clients this will require interpretation of client’s needs to create reports or procedures to provide this information.  I.e., provide quarterly buy-back information to client for any purchases performed directly or indirectly by Active; obtain pre-approval from hotel clients that purchases qualify as incremental business.   
      
      
      • Ad hoc projects as needed.
      
      
      • Confers and cooperates with other management personnel in formulating administrative and operational policies and procedures and prepares recommendations to increase efficiency and profitability of department.
      
      
      • Enforces compliance with administrative policies and procedures.
      
      
      • Negotiates contracts with vendors and suppliers.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Bachelor's degree (B. A.) from four-year college or university, with accounting or business degree preferred; and minimum of ten years of related experience preferred.

To perform this job successfully, an individual should be proficient in both Word and Excel (required); Microsoft Project (or other Project Management software) skills, a plus.  Knowledge of the following proprietary applications are a plus:  PeopleSoft A/P and A/R systems, POWS Lite and CMS.

Certified Travel Consultant (CTC) certification, a plus.

Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification a plus.

Must be able to travel up to 20% of the time.