Global Airline Sales Manager

The Company

lastminute.com is the European Travel Tech leader in Dynamic Holiday Packages. It operates a portfolio of well-known brands such as lastminute.com, Volagratis, Rumbo, weg.de, Bravofly, Jetcost and Hotelscan.

Our mission is to lead the travel industry by leveraging technology to simplify, personalise, and enhance our customers’ travel experience.

We continuously invest in talented people who ensure our offering is closer to the needs of the customers and keep us at the cutting edge of technology evolution. More than 1,700 employees spread across our offices worldwide develop our own products and services to power the entire traveller journey for millions of people.

At the heart of our culture is a commitment to inclusion across race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, gender identity or expression and accessibility. We strongly believe in an equal opportunity space, which is welcoming and celebrates the uniqueness of everyone who works here.

lastminute.com N.V. is a publicly-traded company listed under the ticker symbol LMN on the SIX Swiss Exchange.

This role will be responsible for managing all aspects of the relationships between lastminute.com and airlines, growing the company’s airline portfolio, securing differentiated airline content, and increasing airline revenue streams, volumes, and market share.

Main responsibilities include negotiating global airline commercial contracts and commissions and working closely with the lastminute.com media solutions team to sell media products to airlines. A vital component of this role relates to securing differentiated airline content to support the company’s strategy of being the European Travel-Tech Leader in Dynamic Holiday Packages. The candidate must also be able to demonstrate a strong ability to identify new business opportunities.

The Sales Manager represents the commercial team during internal meetings and is adept at presenting in wider business events and conferences, in addition to external airline business meetings, functions, and networking events. A key part of this role is to have the ability to communicate relevant business information in a concise and effective way, using the most effective communication channel.

Providing accurate reporting and sales data analysis, monitoring airline performance, and making recommendations to internal stakeholders and airlines to support the company strategies is crucial. Strong collaboration skills are necessary in this role, with a significant amount of daily interaction with many other stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Contribute towards and support the Air Commercial strategy across all lastminute.com markets, managing the day-to-day relationship between lastminute.com Group and airlines.
• Be an expert across all segments of the aviation market, for scheduled carriers, low cost, and charter airlines.
• Negotiate airline commercial agreements, content, and marketing funds within the parameters set by the air commercial strategy to maximize revenue streams.
• Review and provide feedback on airline contracts and liaise with the organisation’s legal team to formulate contracts following the company’s legal governance.
• Secure differentiated airline content from commercial partners and non-commercial partners alike, from scheduled airlines, low-cost carriers, or charter providers.
• Be instrumental in growing packaging and flight only market share.
• Have a strong understanding of NDC and different flights distribution technologies.
• Utilize data sources and reporting tools to build an expert view of the account portfolio and the market in general; being able to share these insights in a concise and clear manner to the wider business.
• Identify and explore new revenue streams, developing new business opportunities, whilst closely collaborating with multiple departments across the business.
• Liaise between airlines and internal stakeholders, including the customer service, legal teams, and the ADM team to resolve problems and minimize losses.
• Manage the administration and financial reporting for a portfolio of accounts working closely with the finance teams.
• Provide accurate budgeting, forecasting, and performance data to the wider business.
• Represent the air commercial team in internal meetings; be able to create presentations and communicate the air commercial strategy to the wider business where required.
• Ability to communicate effectively with senior airline representatives and be business confident in different cultural settings.
• Represent lastminute.com at trade functions.
• Regular international travel is a vital part of this role, any candidate must be able to regularly travel, sometimes at short notice. Most travel requirements are within Europe; however, the candidate must be able to travel outside of Europe for several days at a time.

Specialist/Technical Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Significant experience in sales management with airlines, both scheduled, low cost or charters within a Tour Operator, Travel Agency, or OTA environment.
• Good understanding of the Tour Operator market; relating to the flight component.
• Significant experience and understanding of travel E-commerce in travel.
• Significant successes in securing differentiated content from scheduled airlines, low-cost carriers, and charter providers.
• Thorough understanding of the technology used in flights distribution.
• Significant problem-solving skills.
• Excellent commercial awareness, and a Strong negotiator: ability to effectively negotiate with senior internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical skills: ability to understand and utilize a wide range of data and information and build data models.
• Experience presenting to multiple internal and external stakeholders from a range of different departments, utilizing clear and concise communication skills.
• Appreciation and understanding of external and internal influences within the aviation industry and of the challenges and opportunities in today’s aviation market.
• Fluent English skills/Proficiency in other European languages a bonus.

Abilities/Personalities

• High degree of individual ownership, adopting a bold approach in negotiations and in all aspects of day-to-day activities.
• Demonstrate a high level of the following competencies: striving for success, problem solving, and collaboration.
• Ability to motivate and inspire, be empathetic, and influence others through creating strong business cases.
• Enjoy working in a fast-paced, constantly changing, and challenging business environment.
• Positive attitude and ability to overcome challenges in a creative way.
• Strong organizational and prioritization abilities; be agile and able to juggle multiple tasks pertaining to multiple topics very quickly.
• Thorough and meticulous with strong attention to detail, also tenacity and ability to find creative solutions.
• Proactive team player, ability to interact effectively with all levels of a business organization, whether internal or external.
• Self-motivated, taking a high level of individual initiative.
• Able to work remotely, be self-autonomous, prioritize and manage workflow without ongoing guidance.
• Work to tight deadlines with a ‘can-do’ attitude.

What you can expect:

• Join a dynamic team in an inclusive-international environment.
• Grow thanks to the career journey and our internal mobility perspective.
• Manage your own schedule thanks to the flexible start and end of the working day.
• Work a shorter working week (36h), of which 4 hours on Friday morning.
• Get focus time for learning, development, and deep work on Friday mornings.
• Work partially or fully remote according to local laws.
• Enjoy continuous training thanks to our company platform.
• Benefit from employee discounts on travel.
• Receive 2 days off per year for the purpose of volunteering.
• Get free snacks / fruit / hot drinks / water / beverages at our offices.
• Participate in amazing winter and summer corporate events.