Managing Director – Attractions & Experiences
The Managing Director – Attractions & Experiences is a commercially driven, product‑mindful and highly strategic leader who will shape and scale our global Attractions & Experiences business in line with Booking.com’s strategy and mission. The role leads the vision aligned with Booking’s strategy and mission, building a compelling traveler proposition while accelerating supply, demand, partnerships, and innovation. Currently we offer around 300,000 attractions worldwide to our Booking.com customers.
Key Priorities
- Further develop Booking.com’s supply strategy to ensure a strong offer and availability for its customers while ensuring a strong partner value proposition.
- Ensure best‑in‑class customer experience to help our customers plan, book and manage their Attractions and Experience bookings.
- Partner with other BUs to strengthen our market position and effectively accelerate demand generation and cross‑sell opportunities further.
- Ensure continued effective leadership, governance, operating cadence and performance culture within the vertical.
- Effectively and responsibly integrate AI into processes and ways of working to increase productivity but also improve our customer proposition.
Key Relationships:
- Reports to: SVP, Trips
- Direct reports: Product, Commercial and Operations leaders within the Attractions/Experiences organisation (3)
- Key peer relationships: Trips MDs for other verticals, other business unit peers including Accommodations, Marketplace, Fintech, Marketing, Finance
Location: Flexible – Amsterdam (preferred)/Manchester/London. Travel required.
Key Responsibilities
Business leadership and strategy
- Define and lead the long‑term strategy for Booking.com’s Attractions & Experiences vertical, aligned with Booking.com’s priorities and traveler needs.
- Set a clear vision for how attractions and experiences can become a differentiated and material growth engine within the wider connected trip proposition.
- Own the vertical’s business performance, including growth, profitability, and partner quality.
- Identify new growth opportunities across geographies, customer segments, inventory types, and business models.
Commercial growth and marketplace development
- Build and scale a high‑quality global supply base across activities, attractions, tickets, and experience providers.
- Develop commercial strategies that improve assortment, availability, pricing competitiveness, and conversion.
- Lead relationships with key strategic partners, distributors, operators, and ecosystem players.
- Drive marketplace health by balancing traveler demand, partner success, operational excellence, and unit economics.
Product and customer proposition
- Partner closely with Product and Technology leaders to create a best‑in‑class traveler and partner experience.
- Champion a customer‑first approach that improves discovery, merchandising, booking flow, trust, flexibility, and post‑booking experience.
- Ensure the vertical benefits from Booking.com’s broader platform strengths in personalization, cross‑sell, mobile, payments, and loyalty.
- Help shape the roadmap for differentiated experiences products that strengthen brand relevance and repeat engagement.
Cross‑functional leadership
- Serve as the senior point of alignment across Commercial, Product, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Analytics, Legal, and Customer Service.
- Lead through influence across a complex matrix organization, ensuring clarity of priorities, ownership, and outcomes.
- Build operating rhythms, KPIs, and governance mechanisms that improve decision‑making and execution speed.
- Represent the business with senior internal stakeholders, external partners, and industry forums.
Operational excellence
- Establish clear performance metrics and business reviews across supply growth, conversion, attachment, repeat, NPS, partner satisfaction, and margin.
- Drive execution discipline and accountability across teams to deliver against ambitious goals.
- Ensure scalability of processes, tools, and operating models as the business grows.
- Partner with legal, compliance, and trust teams to uphold high standards around safety, quality, and regulatory requirements.
Team leadership
- Build, inspire, and develop a high‑performing leadership team for the vertical.
- Attract top talent and foster a culture of pace, ownership, innovation, and collaboration.
- Coach leaders across multiple functions and geographies, creating strong succession and capability depth.
- Act as a visible and motivating leader who can align teams behind a compelling ambition.
Ideal Experience and skills
- Significant senior leadership experience in marketplaces, e‑commerce, or another fast‑scaling digital platform business. Experience in Travel and Experiences are desirable but not a must.
- Proven track record of owning and scaling a complex consumer‑facing business or category with meaningful revenue responsibility.
- Strong commercial experience, including supply‑side strategy, partner negotiations, business development, and go‑to‑market execution.
- Strong understanding of marketplace dynamics, including liquidity, pricing, conversion, partner economics, and customer behavior.
- Experience working closely with product and technology organizations to shape digital products and customer journeys.
- Demonstrated success leading cross‑functional, and international teams in a matrixed environment.
- Experience setting strategy while also driving operational execution and performance management.
- Ideally brings experience in tours, activities, attractions, ticketing, leisure, online travel, or adjacent consumer internet sectors.
- Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or equivalent advanced degree is a plus.
Strategic and commercial leadership
- Strong strategic thinker with the ability to translate vision into measurable business outcomes.
- Excellent commercial instincts and a sharp understanding of what drives scalable growth with ability to negotiate effectively and build long‑term partnerships.
- Data‑driven individual, with the ability to make high‑quality decisions in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments.
Customer and product orientation
- Deep commitment to customer experience and a strong intuition for what creates traveler value.
- Comfortable partnering with product and tech teams to prioritize features, propositions, and platform investments.
- Data‑informed, with strong analytical judgment and fluency in performance metrics.
Leadership and influence
- Exceptional leadership presence with the credibility to engage at executive and board level.
- Highly effective in matrixed environments; able to align senior stakeholders without relying solely on direct authority.
- Strong negotiator.
- Strong people leader with a track record of building trust, developing talent, and raising the performance bar.
Execution and resilience
- Action‑oriented, with a bias for pace and accountability.
- Comfortable balancing long‑term ambition with near‑term delivery.
- Resilient, adaptable, and effective in navigating change, complexity, and competing priorities.
Communication and partnership
- Outstanding communicator, both internally and externally.
- Strong negotiation and relationship‑management skills.
- Able to represent Booking.com with senior partners and industry stakeholders in a compelling way.
Pre‑Employment Screening
If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre‑employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre‑employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.
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