Director, Hospitality

Optima Living•Vancouver, BC

35d

About The Position

Founded in 2007 by two friends inspired by their families’ dementia journeys, Optima Living was created to provide a more home-like experience in seniors housing and care. What began as a personal mission has grown into one of Western Canada’s leading senior living and continuing care providers. Today, Optima Living offers Independent Living, Assisted Living, Supportive Living, Long-Term Care, Brain Health, and Memory Care across Alberta and British Columbia. Our innovative approach includes Spark, Your Wellness, Your Way; our proprietary brain health and care model. As the only Top 10 Canadian senior living and care provider focused exclusively on Western Canada, we proudly serve more than 4,300 residents. Guided by our North Star, Let us welcome you home™, we are committed to People, Place, and Community. With a resident-first philosophy and a focus on innovation, we are redefining aging with purpose creating communities where seniors live with dignity, connection, and joy. Reporting to the Senior Director of Resident Services, the Director of Hospitality is responsible for leading, standardizing, and continuously improving hospitality excellence across Optima Living. Grounded in the Optima Way and our North Star, ‘Let us welcome you home’. This role translates Optima’s service vision into clear standards, training, and accountability—ensuring a consistently high-quality resident, family, team member, and guest experience across all communities. At its core, the role focuses on creating an environment that inspires, equips, and empowers teams to go above and beyond when it comes to service and standards, recognizing that the experience is delivered through both environment and interaction. All duties and responsibilities are carried out in alignment with Optima Living’s mission, vision, and values, promoting person-centered care by respecting the uniqueness, dignity, and self-determination of residents to promote maximum personal and functional independence. These duties are performed within the framework of established organizational policies and procedures, industry best practices, while adhering to applicable regulations and standards.

Requirements

Minimum of 3-5 years of progressive experience in hospitality, restaurant, luxury residential, or multi-site service operations.
Demonstrated experience leading multi-site hospitality or service teams.
Strong track record of building consistent service standards across diverse locations.
Experience influencing outcomes without direct authority.
Excellent communication, coaching, and stakeholder-management skills.
Demonstrates a systems thinking approach with a strong operational mindset
Proven ability to lead with calmness and credibility while partnering effectively across clinical, operations, and infrastructure teams
Highly service-oriented with strong emotional intelligence
Able to balance standardization with the need for local flexibility
Sets and upholds high expectations for hospitality standards, with the ability to inspire and motivate others to achieve the same
Clear Police Information Check
Clear Vulnerable Sector Check

Nice To Haves

Experience in senior living, or healthcare environments is an asset.
Background in hotel, or customer experience-driven organizations is an asset.
Exposure to growth, new site openings, or portfolio expansion is an asset.
Franchisor/Franchisee experience is an asset.

Responsibilities

Develops and maintains Optima’s hospitality standards, service principles, and experience expectations.
Creates clear, scalable frameworks for resident and guest experience, dining service standards (in collaboration with Dining/Culinary), housekeeping and laundry standards.
Ensures hospitality standards are practical, measurable, and aligned with Optima’s culture, mission and operational realities.
Creates a sustainable rollout plan to ensure that these standards remain intact and effective in the communities.
Leads the Community of Practice (COP) for Hospitality.
Provides leadership and direction to Regional Hospitality Manager ensuring alignment and consistency across regions.
Serves as the primary escalation point for complex hospitality issues that cross sites or regions.
Influences site leadership teams through partnership rather than direct authority.
Supports the communities in action planning for the resident, family, and team member experience strategy, including onboarding, ongoing engagement, and service recovery.
Uses resident and employee feedback, satisfaction surveys, and qualitative insights to identify experience gaps and improvement opportunities.
Leads targeted initiatives to improve consistency and personalization of service across all communities.
Designs and oversees a hospitality training and onboarding framework for hospitality teams and site leadership.
Partners with Operations and HR to embed hospitality expectations into hiring and onboarding, performance reviews, and recognition programs.
Champions a hospitality-first mindset, reinforcing that hospitality is everyone’s responsibility.
Establishes and monitors key hospitality metrics, including resident satisfaction, service recovery trends, and audit results.
Conducts regular reviews with Regional Hospitality Manager to drive accountability and improvement.
Leads continuous improvement efforts based on data, best practices, and frontline feedback.
Partners with Operations teams to ensure hospitality considerations are built into new site openings, renovations and refreshes, and space design and flow.
Supports pre-opening hospitality readiness, including staffing models, training, and experience planning.
Ensures hospitality systems scale effectively as Optima grows.