Principal Business Development Manager EMEA - Lodging, Ground & Sea in London

Powering the agentic revolution in travel. Sabre is an AI-native technology leader, backed by one of the world’s largest travel data clouds. Built on an open, modular, cloud-native architecture, Sabre serves as the backbone for both established leaders and bold, new disruptors, guiding them to the next age of travel retailing through intelligent, connected, and personalized experiences. With AI at its core and operating at unparalleled scale, Sabre transforms insights into innovation, empowering airlines, hoteliers, agencies and other partners to retail, distribute and fulfil travel worldwide.

This is a strategic and global role within Sabre LGS (Lodging, Ground & Sea) organization responsible for generating demand for our portfolio of products which include: hotel, cars, ground, and rail segments and other ancillary products. The lodging segment is a key focus area at Sabre and is one of the six growth areas identified across the company. The role will work closely with our commercial teams to increase sales within EMEA and globally. The role will be customer facing working with senior executives of current and prospective customers at the largest global TMCs, OBTs and regional travel agencies. Its success will depend on close collaboration with Sabre’s agency sales team.

In addition, the successful candidate will focus on Business Development in EMEA focused on LGS products (especially Hotels) and our new OBT booking solutions and will provide strategic direction to achieve the business targets. The ideal candidate will be a strong relationship builder with proven track record of successfully collaborating in a matrix organization while growing high-performance teams. This role will require a deep understanding of the travel ecosystem and how to sell Online Booking tools and API services to our travel agencies, TMCs, third party partners and other distribution channels. An understanding of the technology stacks being used at all touch points and segments including Corporate, Leisure, OTAs as well as understanding back-office systems at travel agencies will be preferred.

In addition to having responsibility for achieving revenue and booking targets, this role will be responsible for providing input from our largest customers to our Product Strategy team on how to enhance current offerings and prioritising future roadmap items for the managed travel category. This role will work closely with our EMEA and UK agency customers, agency sales teams, product strategy, supply teams and the onboarding / delivery teams; identifying key pain points and areas of opportunity for Sabre to deliver further value to our customers. We are looking for someone who can amplify the value Sabre provides in the managed travel category, help our clients align their goals with Sabre and establish the demand team as a trusted advisor and strategic partner.

Key responsibilities:

• Able to drive demand across our agency partners in order to deliver / exceed on plan numbers. Work collaboratively with Sabre Agency Sales executives to develop sales strategies to meet and exceed sales targets.
• Be the customer advocate within Sabre and help drive product requirements, delivery and adoption across demand (agency) partners. Work directly with the delivery and onboarding team to ensure product adoption for new enhancements.
• Establish yourself as a key leader at Sabre to effectively collaborate across Sales, Product, Technology, HR, Marketing, Finance and Operations teams to ensure that customer needs are appropriately met and prioritised.
• Develop strategies that can deliver value and growth for our partners with a lens towards how Sabre can become a leading B2B travel platform for hotel, car, ground and rail.
• Grow and maintain senior level relationships within EMEA and the appropriate counterparts in agencies and API / OTB clients (especially product and strategy).
• Understand market dynamics, group and allotment travel in travel distribution and emerging business models in order to grow our market share and adoption of products.
• Client Stewardship – work with demand partners and commercial teams in a consultative role identifying trends and providing Sabre solutions to identified challenges.
• Play a key part in building the customer value proposition for new Online Booking tool and working with matrix teams to operationalise, grow and expand current offering and develop sales and go to market strategies with our marketing and sales enablement teams.

Qualifications:

• Strong domain experience preferred in the Hospitality or Ground Transportation industry.
• Thorough understanding of technology solutions being used in the travel ecosystem with good knowledge of data flow and parameters important for APIs.
• 10+ years of relevant experience out of which 5 + years should be in leading projects in technical sales, sales enablement or solution consultants, preferably in travel technology.
• Understanding of Online Booking Tools in the travel industry as well as knowledge of building detailed product requirements, agency set up, back office and reporting needs.
• Ability to work with a large commercial organization in a fast paced, matrix driven global organization.
• Significant business experience and demonstrated success in achieving business targets.
• Exceptional communications skills and executive presence.
• Has inherent curiosity, is passionate for the travel industry, and wants to take partnerships to the next level.
• Has a strategic mindset and solution orientation.