Vice President, Direct Consumer Sales & Experience

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection • Fort Lauderdale, FL

13d • Onsite

About The Position

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is seeking a Vice President, Direct Consumer Sales & Experience to lead its direct-to-consumer commercial engine. This executive role reports to senior commercial leadership and is responsible for inbound and outbound consumer sales, Travel Services (Air, Ground, and Hotel), and the Guest Experience Ambassador organization. This is a revenue leadership position with a focus on delivering direct consumer revenue in a contact center environment, establishing scalable sales processes, and ensuring a seamless guest journey. The role involves close collaboration with Marketing, Technology, Revenue Management, and global business partners to convert demand into voyages and build long-term customer loyalty.

Requirements

• Twelve or more years of progressive experience in direct-to-consumer sales, contact center leadership, or commercial operations.
• Five or more years leading leaders at the Director level or above.
• Demonstrated ownership of a consumer revenue target of meaningful scale, with a verifiable record of delivering growth against plan.
• Deep contact center fluency: workforce planning and capacity modeling, omnichannel routing, quality assurance, incentive design, and performance metrics.
• Proven success building sales process and enablement programs from the ground up.
• Sophisticated cross-functional influence, particularly with Marketing and Technology partners.
• Credibility to represent the channel at the executive table.
• Command of CRM, contact center technology, and cruise reservation platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Genesys, Five9, Seaware, or comparable systems).
• Experience operating from data rather than instinct.
• Must hold experience with Seaware or a comparable cruise reservation and booking platform, including reservation workflows, pricing, inventory, guest profile management, and issue resolution.
• Bachelor's degree in business, hospitality, marketing, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally, including shipboard visits and partner engagements.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in luxury travel, cruise, resort, private aviation, or another high-consideration, high-touch consumer category.
• Exposure to global markets and multilingual sales organizations.

Responsibilities

• Own the direct-to-consumer revenue target (bookings, net ticket revenue, ancillary attachment, and occupancy contribution) and deliver it against plan.
• Build the annual direct sales plan and operating budget, including headcount, incentive design, channel investment, and capacity modeling.
• Partner with Revenue Management on pricing, promotional constructs, and inventory strategy.
• Establish the forecasting and pacing rhythm for demand visibility and recovery plans.
• Lead the contact center sales organization across inbound and outbound sales motions.
• Drive conversion of inbound inquiry through speed to contact, consultative discovery, and confident close.
• Build a purposeful outbound program for past-guest reactivation, waitlist follow-up, milestone outreach, and targeted campaigns.
• Define and manage the core performance framework for the sales organization (conversion rate, revenue per contact, average booking value, contact quality, abandonment, pipeline velocity).
• Recruit, develop, and retain Sales Advisors with luxury fluency.
• Lead the Travel Services organization for Air, Ground, and Hotel arrangements.
• Grow attachment and margin across air deviations, private transfers, and pre- and post-voyage stays.
• Own supplier and partner relationships across air, ground transportation, and hotel programs.
• Ensure anticipatory and human disruption management for travel arrangements.
• Lead the Guest Experience Ambassador organization, managing the guest's journey from deposit through embarkation and beyond.
• Design pre-voyage journey documentation, shore excursion and onboard reservations, celebration planning, and personalization.
• Convert stewardship into revenue through pre-voyage curation of experiences, dining, spa, and enrichment.
• Own guest satisfaction and loyalty outcomes for the direct channel, including repeat-sail rate, referral, and voice-of-guest measures.
• Partner with Marketing as a single commercial team to align campaign calendars, demand forecasts, lead volume and quality, offer strategy, and messaging.
• Establish shared attribution and lead-disposition reporting to measure marketing investment on booked voyages.
• Partner with Technology and Digital on the systems roadmap (CRM, telephony, booking platform, quoting tools, reporting, AI-assisted service).
• Represent the direct channel with global business partners, travel advisor and trade partners, and international market teams.
• Serve as the voice of the guest and front line to Product, Operations, Onboard Revenue, and Shipboard leadership.
• Architect the end-to-end direct sales process (lead capture, qualification, quoting, follow-up, payment, and handoff).
• Build the sales enablement infrastructure (onboarding, product certification, discovery frameworks, quality assurance, knowledge base).
• Deploy playbooks, talk tracks, and battlecards to enhance performance.
• Instrument the funnel end-to-end and drive a test-and-learn discipline.
• Pursue relentless simplification of processes and systems.
• Ensure adherence to consumer sales regulations, data privacy requirements, and brand standards.
• Lead a multi-site, multilingual organization of leaders, advisors, and ambassadors.
• Cultivate a culture grounded in The Ritz-Carlton service philosophy.
• Set a standard for accountability and craft.
• Champion engagement, recognition, and inclusion within the team.

Benefits

• The Ritz-Carlton fosters a culture where all are valued, quality of life is enhanced, individual aspirations are fulfilled, and The Ritz-Carlton Mystique is strengthened.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive