Senior Director Hotel Stay Experience

Your day to day
• Lead and manage the P&T Stay experience team, taking full responsibility for building a world-class end-to-end digital guest digital stay experience. Utilize digital products and technologies to optimize the entire process from check-in to check-out, leverage digital technologies to optimize hotel operating costs, and enhance the guest experience.
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of the following products, oversee real-world testing at hotels, and assist in the drafting of hotel operations manuals
- Self-service check-in kiosks
- Self-service check-out and self-service invoice solutions
- Hotel stay experience portal mini-program
• Oversee the development, upgrades, and global deployment of core hotel experience products, including smart TVs, hotel Wi-Fi, and smart guest control systems.
• Collaborate closely with other P&T teams—including the hotel product team, pre-opening team, and hotel IT operations and maintenance team—throughout all product lifecycles and phases to ensure the long-term, stable operation of solutions.
• Work closely with hotel operations teams to ensure product details align with hotel requirements and assist in drafting hotel operational guidelines to ensure the successful implementation of solutions in relevant hotel scenarios.
• Work closely with AI engineers and suppliers to actively implement AI-driven replacements, optimizations, and upgrades across various solutions.
• Drive continuous improvements on the use of Technology across our hotels to maximize Hotel Operations Excellence.
• Ensure service level agreements are maintained for IT systems problems within the hotels.
• Develop and manage consistent and concise vendor relation and service level management model. Maximize P&T’s ability to effectively respond to Hotel systems, IT Security and compliance issues regarding compliance, IT Security controls and other Hotel systems related issues.
• Responsible for new services to be transitioned to the Technology vendor and providing program level management for projects associated with the delivery of service.
• Works with internal audit, risk management and other parts of Global Operations to remediate audit findings and drive information security awareness.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
• Partner with Hotel Operations Support team to fully integrate the hotel ready process in Global Technology.
• Provide recommendation and feedback on continuous improvement in program, system and tools to Operations and Hotels.
• Manage external vendors and a team of subject matter experts for standard hotel business applications and guest facing technology solutions.
o Provide business and technology consulting to assist customer areas in improving processes, applying value-added technology, identifying high value opportunities to enhance revenues or reduce costs through process improvements.
o Embed operational process with our core hotel applications and ensure supplier training delivered to our hotels is aligned with our operational standards and procedures.
o Overall responsible to ensure supplier training and implementation resources are certified to deliver and support IHG hotel projects.
o Act as lead interface between hotel system vendors, IHG business units and hotels.
o Act as a hotel application support escalation for IHG. Manage and prioritize hotel application enhancement and bug fixes.
• Drive consistency in adoption in processes, tools and mythologies within Greater China and across other regions.
• Direct and oversee the implementation of knowledge based systems in order to ensure appropriate resources are available to respond to hotel systems inquiries/issues.
o New networks, systems, solutions and services are introduced which meet our business requirements and meet the utility/warranty needs of our customers.
o All changes to our technology infrastructure are planned, integrated, tested and are compliant with industry standards, regulations and legal requirements (e.g. PCI-DSS, Data Protection, Sarbanes Oxley, etc).
o The effective local design and planning of technology global technology standards, including networks, firewall and intrusion protection, communication services, application certification, active directory domain and policies and desktop & server architecture.
o Appropriate compliance testing and assessment activities are completed and that the region operates an appropriate security framework for IT systems and services.
o Our Business Continuity Plans cover all data centre, core network, offices, and hotels and are tested regularly for effectiveness.
o The process of developing and releasing security & functionality patches and updates into the region’s technology environment is performed and consistently improved.
o Close collaboration with Global Audit functions to ensure appropriate on-going IT controls and processes are in-place.

What we need from you
• Bachelor's or Master's Degree in a relevant field of work or an equivalent combination of education and work related experience.
• 12+ years progressive work related experience in information technology with demonstrated proficiency in technologies, processes management related to position; 10 years or more managing significant complex projects. Strong understanding of hotel operation; 7 years and above in leadership role to manage a team
• Strong guest facing product design capability
• Understanding and demonstrated ability in integration of the IHG hotel core business applications with hotel operation requirement such as: PMS, S&C,.
• Understanding of core hotel operational processes, including Front Office, Reservations, Sales, F&B and Guest Facing Technology is a strong plus
• Good experience in delivering training.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize a project portfolio based on the needs and resources of the business.
• Demonstrated ability to identify, manage conflict, cross dependencies across projects and business areas.
• History of successfully interpreting customer objectives & translating to service delivery requirements.
• Demonstrated proficiency in promoting ideas persuasively, building consensus and negotiating mutually beneficial solutions.
• Demonstrated understanding of information systems, business processes key drivers and measures of success for assigned business area, including the short and long-term direction of the technology.
• Demonstrated effective verbal and written communication skills.
• AI knowledge and experience is a strong plus