Head of Regional Air Partners

**Purpose Statement**

Lead commercial activities with airlines in the Asia Pacific region to ensure Retention, Enhancement and Acquisition of “Best In Class Airline Content”. Ongoing analysis, negotiation, and relationship building with airline customers to optimize short
- and long-term profitability. Lead a team of regionally located commercial managers.

**Main Accountabilities**:

- Develop significant partnerships with large quantity of airlines to drive commercial advantage for Travelport in distribution, content, rate and commercial positioning.
- Retain and hire exceptionally talented staff to manage day to day relationships and negotiations in the manner that the company desires.
- Direct ongoing rates and terms within numerous contract negotiations simultaneously. Define guidelines and targets for the commercial negotiations undertaken by the team.
- Build strong internal relationships with leaders in Finance, Legal, HR, Marketing, Agency Sales, Travel Partners, and others to gain consensus and support from throughout the company.
- Ensure that effective management reporting is developed, enabling the tracking of performance, opportunities, and delivery against targets for contract Renewal, content Enhancement and new customer / content Acquisition.
- Prepare departmental short
- and long-terms goals and plans, to accomplish agreed upon goals.
- Develop department budget which provides for the attainment of agreed upon goals in accordance with approved plans.
- Formulate policy for the department and secure appropriate approvals. Provides the overall direction necessary to ensure efficient and effective services.

**Knowledge, Skills, Experience, Training, Education**:

- A level of knowledge equivalent to that ordinarily acquired through completion of a Bachelor's degree in Sales, Marketing, Business, or related field. Masters Degree preferred.
- Demonstrated experience in creative partnership building where both sides are beneficiaries and view partnership as a ‘win-win’.
- Significant experience in complex contract negotiations involving Fortune 500 companies and multi-million dollar commercial terms.
- Extensive knowledge of, and contacts within, the travel industry with specific emphasis on airlines, GDS and online. In-depth knowledge of market dynamics, key players and the levers for change.
- Proven ability to develop credible and influential senior relationships at senior executive level within complex organizations
- Strong understanding of airline/agency/travel industry/Computer Reservation System (CRS) industry and operations.
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to travel a great deal, and on short notice.

**Key Measures**
- Bring about and maintain profitable relations with partner airlines through mutual respect and a bias toward ‘win-win’ relationships
- Staff of 50 to 10 Directors, Mangers and support staff with responsibility for a portfolio of airlines.
- Financial Metrics include Revenue and Yield, Non-Financial include Renew (contract renewal), Enhance (securing new best in class content) and Acquire (new customer and new content acquisition)

**Working Relationship**
- Regular contact with the Senior Management team
- Legal department to craft airline contracts
- Finance department for full awareness of pricing, deal modeling and payment/billing issues
- HR department for recruitment of retention of industry leading staff
- Travel Partners and Agency Sales for joint sales efforts
- Marketing department for product design and support.
- Senior leadership of airline companies