An exciting new opportunity has become available for a Contracts Manager to join a travel company who specialise in educational activity courses and residential school trips! This will involve successfully negotiating contracts for accommodation, agents, transport, visits, restaurants, and other ancillary / 'in resort' services with Travel Industry Suppliers and Agents

Key Responsibilities:

• Determine and source adequate suppliers to provide sufficient ground services and transport provisions and ensure they all meet our standards and requirements which include but not limited to accommodation, agents, transport, visits, restaurants, and other ancillary services
• Negotiate competitive rates, allocation supply, special offers, exclusive deals, contractual terms, and rebates to provide an effective supply of quality accommodation and ground transport to meet customer demand in designated destinations.
• Identify appropriate Ground Handling agents and develop commercial agency agreements for the supply of accommodation/services as required.
• Liaise with Product, Sales and Operations & Ground Transport teams on potential new services and destination information for current and future product requirement.
• Achieve / exceed contracting objectives (i.e. rates, allocations, exclusivity, rebates, limit pre-payment conditions and cancellation charges etc.) for destinations within agreed timeframes.
• Monitor demand, booking volume and year-on-year rate increases for contracted services.
• Oversee accommodation allocation usage seek insight in areas of under usage/ high demand and take relevant action
• Follow sign off H&S process for introduction of new and existing contracted services - Accommodation, visits and transport (Full training will be provided).
• Visit designated destinations to conduct effective face to face negotiations with suppliers together with sourcing new suppliers and destination information.
• Conduct effective "remote" negotiations with suppliers (by telephone / in writing / Microsoft Teams etc.) using effective negotiation, communication and linguistic skills where required.
• Manage supplier relationships throughout the periods of the contracts, ensuring contracting deadlines are met.
• Maintain contracted services system information.
• Manage the ongoing productive, profitable relationship with Agents and Suppliers. Maintain awareness of market conditions and opportunities to maximise competitive advantage
• Manage the relationship with relevant independent service providers (City Reps / Guides/ In Resort Representatives, etc.) to ensure consistent, effective 'in resort' service to customers
• Support the development of destination knowledge by participating in customer feedback investigations and knowledge sharing activities
• Support the Health & Safety function with Accommodation and Transport auditing

Skills Required:

• Substantial experience of successfully negotiating contracts with existing and new suppliers, preferably gained within the Travel Industry,
• Financial and commercial awareness with experience of competitor and market analysis
• Experience in conducting negotiations with suppliers face to face, by telephone and email
• Good accuracy and attention to detail (numerical and non-numerical data)
• Confident linguistic capability in English
• Competent user of MS products (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc)
• Willingness to travel frequently including both short and long-haul overseas travel
• Full driving licence and confident driving in non-UK destinations (Europe, USA etc)
• Confident linguistic capability in at least 1 other European language (French, German, Spanish, Italian)
• Travel Industry experience
• Knowledge of the group travel market

What's on offer:

• Salary - £35,000
• Remote working with the Occasional trip to head office in Lancashire
• Monday - Friday 8am - 5:30pm