Assistant Director of Sales - Leisure & MICE

About us

At voco®, we’ve created a hotel brand that gives people a different choice. Hotels to count on but different enough to be fun. Unstuffy hotels, where people feel comfortable to relax, and just get on with relaxing. Our family of hotels are connected by their own sense of style and individual character and that’s something we make the most of. Finding the perfect mix of reliability and new experiences. Because we believe that when you respect individuality life gets interesting. 

At the heart of every great stay is a great host. We think the trick to hosting is to take the time to understand what your guests need, and want. So before they arrive, we find out more about them and how we can make their stay better. Whilst they are with us we give tempting recommendations of our favourite drinks or food, or tips for local experiences that they won’t find in any guide book.

Your day to day

As Assistant Director of Sales - Leisure & Mice you’ll develop and implement strategies to ensure revenue and room night sales goals are achieved, sales and marketing strategies are set, tactical plans are created and implemented, and results are monitored and achieved.

A little taste of your day-to-day

Every day is different, but you’ll mostly be:

People

• Identify business trends and marketing opportunities that can improve hotel's performance. 
• Work closely with each salesperson to identify opportunities and ways to maximize and exceed personal and team revenue goals.
• Complete face-to-face sales calls (minimum 5 sales calls per day).
• Understand the overall Dubai market, competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, economic trends, supply and demand and know how to sell against them.
• Know the business in the market including where and why clients book at competitor hotels.
• Monitor segment and team productivity and targets for Leisure and MICE 
• Identify best opportunities for future business based on hotel needs.
• Actively sell all hotel services through outside sales calls, telemarketing, entertainment, sales trips, events and other channels.
• Use negotiating skills and creative selling abilities to close business for hotel and maximize revenue opportunities.
• Build and strengthen relationships with existing and new customers to enable future bookings. Activities include sales calls, entertainment, FAM Trips, sales trips, trade shows and others.
• Effectively manage and develop relationships with key internal and external stakeholders.
• Maintain a central and up to date file of all rates contracted, offers and promotions in place.
• Handle Familiarization trips, site inspections and entertainments as per department needs, Budget and Marketing Plan as requested by the Commercial Leader.

Colleague Handling

• Ensure complete Department training hours as per policy.
• Increase management's effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training, coaching and counselling staff. 
• Works closely with the Human Resources to execute the following Human Resources related tasks within department:
  - Performance appraisals
  - Coaching
  - Counselling
  - Discipline and grievance
  - Colleague relations      
  - Compensation and benefits
• Lead the team through communicating values, strategies, and objectives via self-practice.
• Build a healthy work culture by exchanging information, taking opinions and participating in colleague activities.

Executive Duties

• Develop strategic plan by studying technological and financial opportunities, presenting assumptions and recommending objectives.
• Build company image by collaborating with customers, government, community and employees and by enforcing ethical business practices.
• Maintain professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops, reviewing professional publications, establishing personal networks, benchmarking state-of-the-art practices and participating in professional societies.
• Participate in the Hotel’s Manager on Duty programme and perform regular weekday and/or weekend duty shifts as per the Hotel’s operational requirements.
• Respond to audits to ensure continual improvement is achieved.

General Responsibilities

• Understand and strictly adhere to the Rules & Regulations established in the Colleagues Code of Conduct Policy and the Hotel’s policy on Fire, Hygiene, Health and Safety.
• Promote efficiency, confidence, courtesy and an extremely high standard of social skills.
• Generally promote and ensure good inter-departmental relations.
• Display a pleasant manner and positive attitude at all times and to promote a good company image to guests and colleagues.
• Demonstrate pride in the workplace and personal appearance at all times when representing the hotel thus identifying a high level of commitment.

What we need from you

Bachelor’s degree / higher education qualification / equivalent in marketing or related field, four or more years of experience in a hospitality or hotel sales and marketing setting with direct supervisory experience over a sales team. Strong knowledge of local businesses and business trends required.

How do I deliver this?​

We genuinely care about people and we show this through living out our promise of True Hospitality each and every day. It’s what connects every colleague in all IHG^® hotels.

Each IHG® hotel brand delivers True Hospitality in their own way, and at the heart of it all are specific, core service skills.

• True Attitude: being caring, wanting to make a positive difference, and building genuine connections with guests 
• True Confidence: having the knowledge and skills to perform your role, and giving guests the confidence that they can trust you, to help and support them during their stay
• True Listening: focusing on what your guest is saying, picking up on body language that is often overlooked, and understanding what the guest wants and needs
• True Responsiveness: is about providing guests with what they need, and doing so in a timely and caring manner

There’s so much more to the job than we can capture here. It’s simply about creating great experiences, doing the right thing and understanding people.

What we offer

We’ll reward all your hard work with a great salary and benefits – in addition to career development, employee room discounts and great work culture. 

Join us and you’ll become part of the global IHG family – and like all families, all our individual team members share some winning characteristics. As a team, we work better together – we trust and support each other, we do the right thing and we welcome different perspectives. You need to show us you care, that you notice the little things that make a difference to guests as well as always looking for ways to improve -visit www.http://careers.ihg.com to find out more about us. 

Reliably Different - Welcome to voco® Hotels, IHG’s new upscale brand. We call our Hotels voco® – It means ‘to invite’ and ‘call together’ originating from Latin and representing our thoughtful, unstuffy and charming nature. Guests tell us that voco® is fun without being vanilla, trendy without being alienating and premium, without being stuffy. This unique and playful attitude, combined with a consistent level of quality, sits at the heart of our brand here at voco® Dubai Whatever we’re up to, at every instance, there are brand values and service behaviours that guide us... Brand values: Always dependable, Respect individuality & Be distinctive. Service values: Count on us to; Be natural & Make every stay special. Drawing on IHG’s years of experience in delivering True Hospitality, voco® Hotels gives people a different choice. Hotels that are reliable enough to depend on, but different enough to be fun. 

Our new family of hotels is connected by their individual characters, that make memorable travel dependable with unstuffy hotels, where people feel comfortable to relax, and just get on with relaxing. The moment a guest steps into one of our hotels, they walk into a genuinely memorable experience. The world's first voco® hotel opened in November 2018 in Gold Coast, Australia and the first voco® Hotel across IMEA is voco® Dubai. voco® Dubai is a location like no other with a premium ambience in the heart of Dubai and laid back yet attentive service from the friendly hosts. It’s location on the vibrant Shiekh Zayed Road is also connecting it to many daytime and night delights of the city from shopping, dining and entertainment experiences.