Business Development Manager, Travel Advisor Channel

About the role

EF Go Ahead Tours is looking for a driven, relationship-first Business Development Manager to grow our Travel Advisor channel. This is a ground-floor opportunity where you will own the full lifecycle from identifying and signing new advisors to activating their first booking and building the long-term volume that follows. You’ll be the face of EF Go Ahead Tours to the advisor community: part sales, part educator, part territory entrepreneur. This role is B2B at its core. As one of EF’s first hires in this channel, you will help build the strategy, tools, and processes needed to scale our Travel Advisor program nationally.

Responsibilities

• Grow the Advisor Network
• Possess strong prospecting and closing skills, including calling cadences, agency visits, trade shows, consortium events, and virtual presentations.
• Execute a territory plan to hit monthly and quarterly new-activation targets.
• Reactivate lapsed advisors and convert them into consistent producers.
• Drive bookings from your portfolio, owning booking volume across your active advisor book; accountable to quarterly revenue quotas.
• Serve as the primary EF Go Ahead Tours contact for top-producing advisors, delivering training, promotional support, and account-level plans that include co-op marketing.
• Attend tradeshows, consortium events, and industry conferences, equip advisors with co-op materials and booking incentives in collaboration with Marketing.
• Manage your territory rigorously, maintaining accurate CRM data; track pipeline, activities, and booking attribution.
• Report on KPIs weekly and, as a founding channel member, contribute to the advisor program playbook, portal requirements, and commission tier design.

Requirements

• 5+ years of B2B sales or business development experience in the travel industry (tour operator, cruise line, Destination Management Company, or similar).
• Deep familiarity with the Travel Advisor distribution channel: consortia (Virtuoso, Ensemble, Signature, Travel Leaders), host agencies (Fora, Nexion, Outside Agents), and independent agencies.
• Self-starter who can build a territory from scratch with minimal day-to-day oversight, comfortable operating in ambiguity.
• Strong presentation and communication skills, comfortable training a room of advisors or pitching a consortium executive.
• Ability to travel up to 40%, including overnight stays and occasional domestic and international travel for company events.
• Existing relationships with travel advisors, agency owners, or consortium contacts (preferred).
• Experience with guided tour operators (escorted touring, river cruise, or similar product categories) (preferred).
• Passion for travel and firsthand experience with international destinations (preferred).
• Proficiency with Salesforce (preferred).

Preferred

• Existing relationships with travel advisors, agency owners, or consortium contacts.
• Experience with guided tour operators (escorted touring, river cruise, or similar product categories).
• Passion for travel and firsthand experience with international destinations.
• Proficiency with Salesforce.

Benefits

This is the most fun, high caliber place you'll ever work. Ask any employee why they love EF (whether they've been here 10 minutes or 10 years) and they'll probably tell you the same thing: it's the people. When you work at EF, you join a purpose-driven, international and energetic community that thrives on continuous learning, fearless innovation and mutual support. In addition, you can expect commitment to professional growth, exciting business travel opportunities, market-leading medical, dental and vision coverage, and more.