Big Bus Tours is the world’s largest operator of open-top sightseeing tours, fuelling the spirit of adventure in 22 world-famous cities across four continents. Beginning its journey 27 years’ ago, with a fleet of only three buses, Big Bus Tours has swiftly expanded to a global fleet of over 400 hundred open-top buses, turning 5 million tourists into explorers, every year. Big Bus Tours operates in London, Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Budapest, Istanbul, Miami, Muscat, Rome, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Darwin, Sydney, Vienna, Washington DC, Dublin, Singapore and Los Angeles with a sightseeing concept designed to provide a flexible approach to city discovery. Each open-top bus tour provides a hop-on, hop-off facility at a variety of interesting locations, with complimentary additions to enhance the visitor sightseeing experience. In February 2015, private equity firm Exponent purchased Big Bus Tours, with a shared vision to make Big Bus Tours the number 1 thing to do in each world-famous city. In 2016, Merlin Entertainments PLC became a shareholder, offering a natural synergy with Big Bus Tours and Merlin attractions and experiences around the world. With entertaining guides and commentary and knowledge of the latest events in each city, the Big Bus City Crew leaves every passenger with a story to tell.

Overall Purpose

B2B sales channels are key drivers of growth.  B2B resellers (any business retailing Big Bus tickets to their customers) access and sell tickets through a number of solutions including paper vouchers. Big Bus Partner Booking Platform (PBP) was launched in December 2018 allowing all partners to access and book digital tickets in real time for consumers.  PBP presents Big Bus with an important opportunity for growth and a new team is being created to support that.

The Product Owner will own PBP with a focus on increasing sale of Big Bus & associated tickets, issued digitally through the platform.  This will entail ownership of product and market roadmap for the platform including delivery of new, innovative and disruptive features and critical functionality to help B2B resellers to sign up or transition from other sales methods and make bookings digitally through the platform. 

The individual will work closely with the wider local & international sales and marketing teams in all cities as part of the global growth team and will play a key role in delivering sales targets for the B2B sales channels.

The role covers all Big Bus destinations sold by B2B resellers worldwide, providing an opportunity to work with a variety of new and existing local and international partners.

Accountability and Responsibility

Product Management

• Product management of the Partner Booking Platform
• Combine the best of eCommerce excellence to re-invent the digital booking experience for B2B resellers, making it easy to register, find the necessary product information, book a ticket and report on sales performance
• Partner with the key stakeholders within Big Bus Technology team to ensure that the booking experience is optimised for the users and with stakeholders within Finance team optimising all back office functionality covering reporting and invoicing
• Work with the wider Product and Pricing team to improve the range of tickets made available for sale through the platform
• Work with key 3rd party vendors to define, design, prioritise, develop and deliver the product
• Work with Customer Experience & eCommerce teams to access insights to help shape future development roadmap for PBP

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• Establish an effective communication framework for B2B resellers; engage them throughout their lifecycle; create a well-coordinated booking experience and optimise sales

Planning

• Devise a growth plan for the platform to include growth from existing partners in the territory as well as recruitment of new partners with timescales, sales projections and costs
• Identify opportunities to enter new markets to sell new attraction products

Prospecting/ Negotiating

• Actively attend relevant trade events/meetings to meet B2B resellers
• Together with wider internal teams where relevant, negotiate deals with partners to either increase sales or reduce costs, ultimately leading to business growth – this could be a distribution partner selling Big Bus tickets or an attraction whose tickets will be sold by Big Bus

Account Management

• Establish a reporting process to monitor progress and identify growth opportunities 
• Drive a “pursuit of excellence” culture & motivate partners & internal members of the sales team in order to exceed goals and maximize the sales execution
• Develop a trusted advisor relationship with internal and external stakeholders

Knowledge:

• Excellent understanding of travel industry with an ability to assess demand thus ensuring that we plan sales & promotional activities in a timely manner
• Proficiency in additional languages will be an advantage

Skills:

• Proficient in use of Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics and Google Analytics 
• Excellent communication, negotiation and presentation skills
• Ability to present and influence credibly and effectively at all levels of the organization, including executive and C-level

Education/Experience:

• At least 5 years’ experience in digital product ownership or eCommerce, with a proven track record in growing sales
• A proven track record in continually improving a booking platform
• At least 2 years’ experience in a mainstream consumer brand, preferably in the travel and/or entertainment categories
• Experience in delivering partner-focused solutions based on customer needs and ability to solve complex problems effectively
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects at a time while paying strict attention to detail
• Budget management & reporting experience in managing marketing budgets and ensuring diligent use of budgets to attain maximum impact
• Experience in managing partnership with agencies, with capability to develop new and highly intuitive features and experiences for consumers
• International experience, having worked in international roles and able to successfully engage with teams from different cultures

Competencies:

• Excellent customer focus, understanding customer needs and how to create new and differentiated experiences that delight them
• Excellent communications skills, with the ability to express ideas or facts in a clear and persuasive manner. Convince others to own expressed viewpoint.
• Analytically minded, effective in identifying problems or opportunities backed by data, recognising important trends and identifying possible solutions
• Technical Knowledge – possessing an in-depth knowledge of the area and able to effectively apply that knowledge to solve a range of problems.
• Results Orientated – consistently delivers required business results; sets and achieves achievable, but aggressive, goals; consistently complies with quality and service standards and meets deadlines; maintains focus on company goals
• Strategic thinking, able to think logically about how much and when to invest into new features and products in order to grow the category and capture more market share most cost-effectively
• Highly action oriented, and able to drive forward projects independently; and plan, organize and coordinate different teams to achieve collective success
• Passion for products, to be able to identify market-leading features, combined with a practical approach to turning dreams into reality