Lead, Product Owner of Onboard Destination & Ship Experience

This position is on – site in our Royal Caribbean Headquarters Miami 1050

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

The Royal Caribbean Group’s Celebrity Shore Excrusions Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Lead, Product Owner of Ship Experiences reporting to the Senio. Manager, Shore Excursions Operations.

Position Overview 

Lead, Product Owner of Ship Experiences is responsible for the effective operational ownership of ship experiences for pay across the fleet of Celebrity Cruises; and may oversee complimentary ship experiences where appropriate. This position implements the Ship Experiences concepts by establishing guest experience playbooks, designs the entire guest journey pre cruise and onboard, and manages the entire scheduling process of the global Ship Experiences portfolio. This Lead is planning long-term schedules for Ship Experiences based on the optimal guest experience data and based on financial forecasts. This position also evaluates and monitors the results of all Ship Experiences from a revenue and guest satisfaction metric to continue to evolve and improve the program. This Lead role is accountable for understanding the cruise and land competitive landscape, and identifying future trends

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and work with consultants and agencies to design and script Ship Experiences.
• Collaborate and facilitate ship experience playbooks with various internal stakeholders.
• Own and create all the Standard Operating Procedures for global Ship Experience portfolio.
• Develop goals based on assessments, research and site visits with the intent to introduce new innovative and differentiating experiences for the brand at over 200 destinations.
• Defined scope for a specific region of the world, select ports of calls, potential partnerships and select target customer segments to recommend the short and long-term product opportunitie.
• Work closely with the product owners and management team for execution and delivery as it pertains to shore excurions, cruise and land packages, and pre/post cruise travel.
• Collaborating with various internal stakeholders, conducting research, identifying new opportunites, engaging new external partners, and delivering a thourough competitive assessment that will establish the long term strategic product offering.
• Implent the roadmap which includes but not limited to identifying, prioritizing, structuring, and managing the product goals and priorities for the addressable itinerary and region.
• Develops long term product recommendation and gaining support for this product offering from the department’s leadership.
• Provides presentations and memos on market research and competitive intelligence that will be integrated into the team’s strategic product recommendations.
• Draft, document and present product briefs, guest experience briefs and success criteria for tours, excursions and packages.
• Partner with the brand’s Destination Development, Revenue Management and Deployment Strategy teams and functions to implement decisions that would benefit and support the long term growth of destination experiences
• Partner with new tour operators and partners in strategic regions and destinations.
•  Initiate the request for proposal or the contract initiation with new operators and partners.
• Conducts research audits, scouting trips, knowledge maps, trend assessments, SWOT analyses to define scope and opportunities.
• Responsible to draft the product brief that includes go-to-market, sales and pricing strategy for tours, excursions and packages within an effective time period to allow for successful implementation by various stakeholders within the brand.
• Develop a recommendation for how the destination may extend to the onboard experience during strategic itineraries or select cruise ships.
• Develop and include a risk assessment of products to ensure there is holistic understanding of the recommended product strategy.
• Serve as a representative of the brand at internal and external cross-functional conversations, events and projects.
•  Work with limited direction, usually within a complex and often ambiguous environment, to drive rigorous, fact-based recommendations to executives, functional, or regional management.
• Liaison with internal partners in Deployment, Destination Development, Sales, Marketing, Revenue, Hotel Operations, Onboard Revenue, Port Operations, IT, Guest Travel Services, and the International Offices.
• Requirements include supporting partnerships, product development and negotiations with external partners such as tour operators, airlines, hotels, transfer providers, and travel agencies.

Performs other duties as required. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position. Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management.

Qualifications and Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in related discipline or equivalent, directly related experience.
• Master’s degree or higher would-be a plus.
• 3-5 years or more of experience in cruise or travel industry, tour operator related business, or experience in destination product development or strategy.
• Longer tenure with this type of experience would be a plus.
• Strong experience in a project management, consumer insights or strategy-focused role highly preferred.
• 1 to 2 years or more in managing people.
• Highly organized. Methodical in research, order, prioritization, and implementation.
• Must be disciplined and comfortable with ambiguity, possessing the maturity and capability to interact and influence across multiple levels and a global matrixed organization.
• Proven track record of success in fast-paced environment with demanding timelines.
• Experience in working within high-performing teams with revenue and profitability metrics.  
• Ability to travel up to 30% of the time.
• Very collaborative and an exemplary great communicator in speech and writing.
• Highly Analytical.
• Ability to convert raw information into applicable strategies.
• Proactive, demonstrate outstanding problem-solving skills and successful in a group setting.
• Strong attention to detail and process management.
• Exceptionally good storyteller who can flex across technical and business, and influence people across all levels.

Financial/Quantitive Responsibilities

• Develop new product and maintain existing product related to specific regions, itineraries or customer profiles that will be responsible for revenue generating results between $5M and $10M in net revenue.
• Monitor the profit margins for this business are aligned with the profitability goals of the brand
• Support and be involved with other areas of onboard revenue which are $600M in global net revenue.

Internal/ External Relationships

Hotel Operations Shoreside

Hotel Directors Shipboard

F&B Shoreside Leadership

F&B Shipboard Leadership

Revenue and Marketing Directors

Shipboard Shore Excursions and Destination Experience teams

Deployment, shoreside

Marine Operations shipboard and shoreside

Onboard Revenue Inventory team

International shoreside offices in the UK and Australia.

Working Conditions

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations. The environment includes office location, and /or moving inside/outside the office. Responsibilities include traveling between numerous offices.  A high noise level is possible if visiting shipboard or offsite locations.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group.

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.

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