Permanent - 40 hours per week

We are Chester Zoo, and for over 80 years we’ve been a leading conservation and education charity, and an amazing, award-winning visitor attraction.

We’re also a team of passionate, talented, enthusiastic and expert people, doing everything we can to prevent extinction, from caring for animals to discovering new conservation ideas, and giving our visitors an inspirational day out.

We work hard because we love animals, we care about nature, we love Chester Zoo and, despite all the challenges that 2020 has thrown at us, we still want to be the best zoo in the world! If you think you can help us to achieve that, then we’d love to hear from you.

We are looking for an ambitious Venue Sales Manager to join our team.

The role:

The Venue Sales Manager is responsible for maximising hospitality, event and venue hire income for Chester Zoo. This role is responsible for achieving income and KPI targets, maximising surplus, developing new business, driving improvement in the event experience both for day visitors and hospitality attendees and developing commercial products and services including but not limited to visitor dining, hospitality, venue sales and large scale zoo events.

The successful candidate will have:

• Broad management experience operating at a senior level - regional or on site location.
• Evidence of exposure to multi-faceted aspects of the sales, events & hospitality industry incorporating both pro-active activity and co-ordination experience into the role.
• Educated to A level and proven experience in an environment such as large hospitality & conference venues, hotels, arena, stadia or visitor attractions.
• Successful track record of business development and pro-active sales, with a broad approach in directly managing client needs and effectively communicating those requirements to the operation.
• Experienced people manager: leading, inspiring and driving a specialist team of 1-10. Development of our people is key within our culture, and leadership is expected to set the tone.
• Exceptional customer service skills whilst constantly assessing and managing the Customer Lifecycle accordingly.
• Experience of budgeting, forecasting and setting targets, and appropriate KPIs and implementing effective performance monitoring systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with the ability to liaise at a senior management level.
• Computer literate with working knowledge of revenue data management systems and the ability to collate and report this.
• Experience of balancing the drive to achieve top line sales with an understanding of bottom line protection.
• Experience in devising and implementing effective performance monitoring systems.
• Ambitious, with the ability to spot a commercial opportunity and follow that through to implementation.

Hours of work are 40 hours per week, 5 days out of 7 on a rota basis including weekends and bank holidays. As guests primarily visit during the day, this is when you will spend most of your time here, but some evening working will also be required when we are holding private events and functions when the Zoo is closed to the general public.

The salary for this position is £33,373.43 per annum and in addition we offer a range of amazing benefits which can be found at https://www.chesterzoo.org/work-with-us/staff-benefits/.

To apply for this position, please go to https://www.chesterzoo.org/work-with-us/ and click apply now to provide your current CV and complete the application form highlighting your skills and experience including why you believe you should be considered for our Venue Sales Manager role.

Closing date for applications is 10th December 2020