Regional Operations Manager — British Isles (Based in Edinburgh or Dublin)

SANDEMANs Tours is looking for a Regional Operations Manager to lead day-to-day tour operations across our Edinburgh, Dublin, and London destinations. This is a hands-on, on-the-ground role for someone who loves tourism, thrives with guides and guests, and wants ownership over how a region performs. You’ll be joining at a pivotal moment: SANDEMANs is in the middle of a major operational transformation, migrating our booking systems onto a single new platform and building toward a marketplace model across our 80+ destinations. We’re hiring four Regional Operations Managers this cycle, and plan to promote one of them into a newly created Operations Director role once the team is established — this posting is a genuine pathway into that role, not just a title. Key Responsibilities Own daily tour operations across Edinburgh, Dublin, and London — scheduling, guide coverage, capacity, and on-the-ground problem solving. Recruit, onboard, and develop tour guides; run auditions and selection processes to find strong, engaging personalities. Monitor tour quality: guest reviews, ratings, complaints, and in-person or spot-check observations. Track regional KPIs — ratings, guide performance, attendance, cancellations, profitability — and report on them regularly. Build and maintain relationships with local partners, venues, and suppliers. Support the testing and rollout of new products and tours in your cities. Work closely with central Operations leadership and other regional managers to keep standards consistent while adapting to local market realities. Manage a regional team of roughly 3–6 local staff and 30–45 guides (1–2 local staff and 10–15 guides per city). What We’re Looking For Experience in tourism, hospitality, or experience-based operations, ideally with people-management responsibility. Comfortable managing guides or customer-facing teams — recruiting, coaching, and holding standards. Strong organisational skills and comfort managing across multiple cities and stakeholders. Confident with performance data and KPIs; commercially minded. Fluent English; additional languages an advantage. Willingness to be based in Edinburgh or Dublin and travel regularly to London (expect roughly 7–10 travel days per month). Comfortable with a tourism schedule: this role typically includes one evening per week and 1–2 weekends per month. Already holding the right to work in your base country — we’re not able to sponsor visas for this role. Familiarity with Ventrata (or a similar tour/activity booking platform) is a strong plus; knowledge of OTA product management, When I Work, Google Workspace, Claude, or HubSpot is a bonus — the more of these you know, the better. Reporting