Senior Manager, Accommodations

About the Role

This position is a key leadership role with primary responsibility for developing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with hotels, hotel brands, NFL hotel team, internal sales team, and other internal and external clients related to NFL. This leader will work with executives within On Location and the On Location Sales team on Super Bowl-related matters and liaise between the NFL and OLE to help reinforce efficient operations and alignment, as needed. The role successfully manages hotel selection, negotiations, contracting, cash flow, inventory management, and reporting for the NFL Hotel team. This individual's key skills include strategic decision-making, contract negotiation, effective organization, and prioritization of work. This person must have the ability to formulate and implement procedures and the ability to teach and lead staff. Proven leadership, communications, and management skills are imperative; familiarity with sports is helpful. The candidate must be strong at multi-tasking and working in a fast-paced environment. Professionalism, a positive attitude, and the ability to work effectively as a team-player are required.

Primary Responsibilities

• Identify lodging needs for all future NFL non-event travel including hotel evaluation, selection, contracting, and ongoing relationship management
• Negotiate hotel contracts based on specific needs (including attrition, food and beverage minimums, amenities, etc.)
• Monitor and manage hotel/lodging contracts to ensure that events receive services as negotiated and terms are appropriately managed (e.g., attrition, rooming list deadlines, special requests, room blocks, etc.)
• Review requests for lodging needs or issue resolution. Gather and relay information between the client, partners, and other departments. Ensure quick turnaround of recommendations or resolution.
• Ongoing client management with both Internal and External clients
• Work with executives, operational staff and liaise between NFL and On Location sales and executive team in various offices
• Develop an operational plan to efficiently manage current NFL hotels and contracts
• Provide leadership and direction while working with leaders of other event teams to develop standardized and documented processes across our offices
• Develop a collaborative environment effective at reviewing the efficiency and accuracy of our processes and identify and implement improvements in a timely fashion
• Work with Director and team to design, document, and implement operational training programs and best practices for the event teams
• Expand our ability to identify and track opportunities to improve quality
• Establish operational accountability (checklists, quality assurance tests, etc.) for the Super Bowl hotel team and share best practices across event teams
• Collaborate with sales team and customer service teams to identify improvement opportunities and develop effective training materials to impact results
• Work alongside the sales team with large proposals for corporate groups
• Develop, track and improve year to year reporting to identify patterns
• Situation analysis and decision making
• Takes initiative to identify solutions to solve particular processes or business problems
• Site inspections of procured hotels and future potential hotels, as well as familiarity with the city

Administrative & Other Responsibilities

• Conduct Event Team and Leadership Team meetings, as needed
• Provide leadership/feedback on process development/improvement during meetings
• Participate in post-event review meetings regularly
• Conduct process review/improvement meetings regularly
• Provide input on performance reviews, bonuses, and merit increases

Other Duties & Responsibilities

This position is responsible for leading coordinator-level functions of the division and indirectly responsible for all division employees. Carries out managerial responsibilities in accordance with the organization's policies and applicable laws. Responsibilities include interviewing, hiring, and training employees; planning, assigning and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems.

Travel

Must be adaptable with work and travel schedule and be available to travel for work during holidays. This position may require up to 25% travel.

Qualifications

Required Education and/or Experience

• Bachelor's Degree in Hospitality, Sports Management, Marketing, Business or a related field, or equivalent experience preferred
• Experience in a management position (minimum of 3-5 years) preferably in the sports and/or travel and hospitality industry
• Experience in handling day-to-day team management activities and issues that may arise
• The ability to enter into negotiations understanding both parties needs and wants and ultimately partnering to obtain win/win results for On Location and vendor, and possibly the client
• Demonstrates appropriate level of technical expertise necessary to work with event bid documents, hotel RFPs and hotel contracts
• Exceptional interpersonal skills – a collaborative style and ability to communicate effectively at all levels with strong oral, written, and presentation skills
• The ability to communicate information and ideas to other people verbally in an understandable manner. This competency includes effectively speaking to groups and individuals, making formal presentations, and listening to others.
• Expresses a concern for client satisfaction and focuses the attention of others on the importance of client satisfaction. Initiate actions, steps, plans, systems, processes or programs that seek to maintain high levels or enhance client satisfaction.
• Having and demonstrating the skill to effectively address and resolve problems as part of a team. Solicit input form team members in a group setting. Put team's success ahead of own and share credit for team accomplishments.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas to others in written form, in an understandable manner. The ability to understand and comprehend information and ideas in written form. This competency includes effective writing and reading.
• A proven record of accomplishment of strong personal effectiveness in which imaginative and distinctive leadership have been demonstrated
• Continually strive for self-development and discovering better means of accomplishing both personal and professional goals

Preferred Education and/or Experience

• Professional Sports and Events Operations
• Travel & Hospitality