Events and Experience Lead

The Events and Experience Lead is critical in bringing to life the guest excellence vision of ‘Own your welcome’, ‘make it memorable’ and ‘creating lasting moments’. The role is responsible for on-the-job supervision, guiding, and supporting a team of frontline guest-facing E&E hosts. The role is focused on ensuring operational excellence and delivering outstanding guest experiences. It will provide leadership and coaching to frontline staff organizing Animal and VIP experiences, organizing new experiences and operationally delivering the Event space in the Hotel, all while maintaining a strong focus on teamwork and service quality.

Ensure first-class guest engagement is delivered throughout all aspects of E&E experiences. First point of escalation for the E&E Department, both in terms of guest experience, client engagement in conferencing and stakeholder engagement throughout the park. Ensure all team members are knowledgeable and maintain the highest standards of appearance; using ‘in the moment’ coaching and guidance when this is not the case. In collaboration with the E&E Manager, make any adjustments to resource headcount and upskilling ensuring continuous improvement of standards and guest experience. Oversee key experiences and enhance the package of experiences to ensure sales growth vs the previous year. Maintain and deliver high standards and appearance of E&E staff.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Operational Leadership: Manage and ensure delivery of all resort events and experiences, including animal encounters, VIP experiences, corporate events, hotel packages, and seasonal activations. Manage and develop team to deliver year-round experiences and achieve revenue targets. Maintain SLAs for back of house operations including booking lines, inbox management, and third-party sales channels. Deliver the strategy for celebrations and guest birthday parties. Implement actions to build guest experience based on feedback anecdotal and recorded (including but not limited to guest comments & KPI data). Ensure day-to-day operation of experiences is managed efficiently through appropriate allocation of resources. Increase sales in all areas of operational delivery and demonstrate improvements in experiences and offers for the CWoA guest.
• Team Engagement & Development: Lead, coach, and develop the E&E team to deliver operational excellence and share commercial performance. Work alongside E&E Coordinator to drive a seamless guest and client experience. Foster collaboration across Hotel, Zoo, Entertainment, and Operations teams to support new initiatives and experience delivery. Provide real-time coaching to team members, offering feedback and further training as needed.
• Guest Experience: Ensure the guest and client experience is delivered to the highest standard, aligned with brand values, mission, and vision. Implement with the support from the Coordinator a seamless booking journey for guests upgrading their experience. Create additional commercial opportunities to enhance guest engagement (animal experiences, VIP days, short breaks, character dining, seasonal events). Continuously review products and services to ensure they meet guest expectations and EBITDA targets. Deliver SLA standard for telephone calls and voicemails and ensure these targets are met. Implement a smooth operational process, to deliver the client experience within Events. Ensure guest queries are handled efficiently and team members achieve service excellence.
• Collaboration & Communication: Ensure all communication, including daily briefing is communicated to team members and that teams feel engaged within the department. Collaborate with Zoo, Hotel, and Entertainment managers to implement new ideas and commercial concepts. Maintain strong relationships with third-party providers to ensure seamless client experiences.
• Health & Safety: Ensure Health & Safety remains the resort’s highest operational priority across all experiences and events. Guarantee that all experiences, events, and operational processes meet required safety standards and compliance expectations.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Adaptability: Demonstrates flexibility and adaptability in response to changing priorities and operational needs. Willing to take on ad hoc responsibilities and support the business through alternative shift patterns or varying working hours as required.
• Attention to detail & Record Keeping: Applies a meticulous and data-driven approach to analysing key performance indicators (KPIs), identifying trends, variances, and opportunities for continuous improvement. Ensures all processes are executed in full compliance with company policies and procedures. Maintains comprehensive and well-organised records, ensuring all processes are executed with precision to prevent discrepancies and uphold operational accuracy.
• Collaboration: Demonstrates the ability to work collaboratively with others to achieve shared goals. Builds positive relationships, respects diverse perspectives, and contributes to a supportive team environment. Promotes a culture of open communication and collaboration, fostering a shared commitment to delivering exceptional guest experiences across all teams.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to confidently engage, influence, and build rapport with staff, guests, and stakeholders at all levels. Provides clear, courteous, and professional communication during guest interactions, consistently creating a welcoming and positive experience. Effectively communicates in a clear, courteous, and professional manner across multiple channels including phone, radio, email, and digital systems. Ensures messages are understood and appropriately tailored to the audience and context.
• Guest Centric-Approach: Consistently strives to enhance the guest experience by proactively identifying and addressing root causes of dissatisfaction, demonstrating a strong commitment to exceptional service and effective issue resolution. Deeply committed to exceeding guest expectations by delivering exceptional experiences through proactive service, personalized interactions, and effective issue resolution.
• Leadership: Skilled in mentoring and motivating teams, promoting accountability, and cultivating a high-performance culture focused on excellence.
• Operational Awareness: Expert in managing escalated guest issues, consistently delivering high-quality, solutions-focused outcomes aligned with company standards and service excellence. Proficient in utilizing guest management systems, ticketing platforms, and performance analytics tools to support operational objectives and enhance service delivery.
• Problem Solving: Ability to identify key actions, prioritize tasks, and resolve issues promptly and effectively. Demonstrates strong critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills to analyse complex guest issues, enhance experiences, and streamline operational processes. Proactively identifies potential challenges or recurring guest feedback themes and implements preventative measures.

Benefits:

• A competitive hourly rate.
• Access to Merlin benefits page with discounts on over 1000 fashion and electronic retailers, restaurants, and travel.
• 25% discount in our on-site retail shops and restaurants.
• 40% discount on Lego.
• Merlin Magic Pass - 20 free tickets for you, your family, and friends to enjoy all our Merlin Attractions across the world.
• ‘Stay for Less’ Hotel Discounts! We always want to give our people the chance to enjoy our full range of the fun so our ‘Stay for Less’ scheme gives employees the chance to… go on, guess… ‘Stay for Less’ at our Merlin hotels.
• Ongoing training and development opportunities.

If you have any questions or if you require any assistance, because of a disability or medical condition, please contact us by email at recruitment@merlinentertainments.biz and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Pay Range: Competitive