Business Development Specialist

Position Summary:

The main responsibilities of this position are to develop OTA platform partnerships, understand each OTA client's organizational structure, business lines and needs. Fully analyze the business opportunities of HKDL on each OTA to support management and sales team in business decisions. Establish a good relationship with customers to form strategic cooperative relations and achieve annual business indicators.

Additionally, this position assists the line manager in driving business targets with Northern China partners, collaborates with travel agencies to increase market penetration and achieve sales targets, and is responsible for business development and market intelligence collection and sharing. Maintain seamless communication and trustful relationships with relevant departments to ensure efficient business operations.

This position requires maintaining good business acumen, continuous learning, and familiarity with the digital economy and OTA platform. The candidate should be willing to learn new marketing methods, participate in industry development forums and activities, continuously improve HKDL's digitalization level in China, become HKDL's online platform sales expert, and drive the rapid growth and development of OTA as well as other trade partner channels in Northern China business.

Cooperate with the Deputy Business Development Manager to complete the Northern China OTA and trade channel coverage plan and actively contribute to the overall business in China.

Key Roles & Responsibilities:

Develop JBP with OTA and other key trade partners in Northern China, build deeper relationship to drive brand awareness on trade, sales conversation and HKDL penetration. Manage the annual plan for the region under their jurisdiction, including tickets and hotel room sales. Setting program targeting and increase the total business on the OTA platform and other trade partners from Northern China region.

Business Expertise:

This position requires customer management skills, in-depth insight into customer business needs, development planning, matching HKDL products and resources, and achieving annual business indicators. And establish joint business plans with key OTAs and trade partners in Northern China. Candidates need to have a good awareness of the digital economy, and at the same time be able to professional digital platform business knowledge, for traffic management and sales conversion has personal special capabilities.

Problem Solving: 

The position requires patience and outstanding negotiation skills to manage a portfolio of trade accounts across multiple sales regions. It involves relatively high complexity in dealing with scarce resource allocation - balancing cost and benefit between the company and travel agents, motivating the trade in a sustainable manner with the ultimate goal of delivering results that in-line with the expectations.  This position is highly results-oriented as business result is expected to account for half of the overall performance appraisal’s grading, and hence the job holder should be able to work under enormous pressure.

Nature & Area of Impact:

The performance of the job holder has significant impact on both revenue (measured in admission and room-night) from his or her responsible sales regions as well as relationship/reputation of the company, as he/she is required to regularly represent HKDL at trade related events, with frequent presentations and briefings to the trade industry.

Interactions / Interpersonal Skills: 

Externally, the job holder has frequent interaction with owners or key management of given trade accounts. Interpersonal skills of negotiation, relating and building rapport are of utmost importance. Internally, he/she has to work frequently with other cross functions including Distribution Marketing on trade promotional projects, Business Development on new product initiatives, Sales Services and Finance team on routine operational issues, TWDC offices on driving business from respective sales region according to specific market needs.

Decision Making:

The job holder has sizable autonomy on all account management activities that fall into his/her OTA accounts and trade partners, such as the deployment of co-op advertisement budget, internal resources allocation, specific trade product or promotions launch, trade education arrangement, outstanding account settlements etc…

Special Skills:

Fluency in Mandarin and English is required to communicate with external partners, OTA members, and trade partners. Regular domestic travel within China is expected.

Proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint is needed for data analysis, pitching, and presentations.

Job Requirements and Qualifications: 

Minimum Education:  Bachelor

Minimum Experience: 3 Years

Preferred Experience: 5-8 years