Role Description:
Led by the SVP Marketplace, who reports to the Chief Business Officer of Booking.com and is on the Booking.com Leadership Team, the Marketplace Business Unit is responsible for the overarching traveller experience on our platform, including traveller-facing journeys that are common across verticals, as well as our customer loyalty program, and company-wide AI and Experimentation capabilities.
Booking.com's Marketplace unit turns travel goals into travel realities. Our purpose? To create frictionless experiences at each and every stage of the trip. From browsing to booking and beyond, our focus is on building the connected experiences which make journeys smoother, faster and more enjoyable. Think of us as travel matchmakers, ensuring seamless integration across our product verticals to effortlessly and intuitively connect traveler preferences and actions.
The Marketplace mission is to truly understand traveller needs and behaviour across multiple verticals, design and implement common traveller-facing product experiences, steward travellers to the right vertical offering, and grow Connected Trips, where travellers not only book hotels or homes, but also flights, car rentals, rides, and local attractions with us. The long-term mission of Marketplace is to grow traveller loyalty through delivering phenomenal product experience, by evolving our customer loyalty program, and by ensuring Booking.com supports our travellers in the right way throughout their trip. Marketplace Business Unit runs the common parts of our website and app, as well as is responsible for key Booking.com-wide capabilities, such as the User Experience, Experimentation Platform, Measurement, and operational Predictive ML models.
The Director, Strategy & Business Operations is a member of the Marketplace Leadership Team and the SVP Marketplace’s strategic and operational partner. You translate Marketplace strategy into clear priorities, portfolios, decisions and delivery. You own the department’s strategic planning, business operations and portfolio governance, ensuring that performance, resources, risks and dependencies are visible and acted on.
Key Responsibilities:
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Run the Marketplace operating cadence, including planning, performance reviews, financial and workforce governance, and executive decision support.
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Together with the Marketplace LT, shape the 1–5 year Marketplace strategy and ensure it is translated into annual and quarterly priorities, portfolios, business cases and resource choices.
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Govern major strategic initiatives and cross-functional dependencies across Marketplace and partner BUs (including Accommodations, Trips, Marketing, FinTech, Central Tech and our corporate functions), making trade-offs and risks explicit and driving timely resolution. Drive change implementation programs across the Marketplace.
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Lead and develop a high-performing team across strategy, business operations and programme management, while contributing to the SBOPC job family across Booking.com. You ensure that critical cross-functional initiatives are on track to achieve their strategic and operational goals, that the dependencies across functions are transparent and managed.
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You facilitate the governance of the workforce management cycle in the department ensuring that headcount decisions and workforce management activities (e.g. talent acquisition) are managed within the budgetary constraints given.
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From a functional perspective it is part of your responsibilities to play an active and leading role contributing to the function’s development and growth across Booking.com and hence is not limited to your own organisation. For that you will maintain and grow the network with your peer group and own decisions and responsibilities in that context too.
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As a result, the scope and variety of topics will be broad. The role will directly manage a team of approx 10 - 15 SBOPC professionals across Strategy, Business Operations, Program/Project Management and you will be responsible for building a high-performing team in line with job family expectations.
Example KPIs:
Individual / team
Your individual and team delivery KPIs will vary according to the nature and aims of the programmes, projects and strategic work being considered. Measures would typically include:
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Strategic priority and portfolio delivery
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Planning, prioritisation and operating cadence
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Quality and timeliness of decision support
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Stakeholder confidence and team health
The collective KPIs of Marketplace to which you should align efforts include:
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Commercial and loyalty performance
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Connected Trip and customer experience outcomes
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Customer centric measures of successful delivery
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AI, data and measurement outcomes
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Execution velocity, trust and people/culture
Ideal experience & skills
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Significant experience leading strategy, business operations, operational excellence or portfolios in a complex global organisation.
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Master degree
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Skilled in strategy development and execution including problem identification, scoping, recommendations of options, consensus building, and translation into implementation plan
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A track record of turning ambiguous strategic questions into evidence-based recommendations, business cases, priorities and execution plans.
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Deep proficiency in change management frameworks, coupled with the ability to create pragmatic toolkits tailored for high-velocity teams.
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Strong financial and data fluency, including KPI design, performance management, experimentation and the practical use of AI-enabled insights.
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Executive-level influence, cross-functional orchestration, change leadership and people leadership; customer-centric, systems-oriented and pragmatic.
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Ability to learn fast and adapt to a fast moving environment as well as experience leading change management efforts
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Creativity and “out of the box” thinking that drives innovation
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Ability to “see around corners” and “connect the dots” in order to enable proactive (not reactive) approaches
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Proven ability to lead a team as well as collaborate and build relationships at all levels of the organization
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Ability to work effectively in a global environment; sensitivity to and an understanding of cultural differences.
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Ability to lead a diverse team of professionals across strategy, business operations, and program management functions.
