Manager, Housing Program - University of Illinois

Who We Are:

The Role and What You’ll Do:

The Hotel Program Manager is a critical role for Anthony Travel’s Hotel Program with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The role focuses primarily on supporting the hotel contracting process and contract execution for the University Hotel Program. Responsibilities will include managing defined policies and procedures, maintaining and upholding contracts through event completion/bill reconciliation and developing and analyzing internal, vendor and client reports.

The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 2 years previous sales experience in a hotel environment, negotiating group contracts. They must have strong attention to detail, be proficient in Microsoft Office and be able to effectively interact with management on a regular basis. The candidate must be strong at multi-tasking, working in a fast-paced environment and understands hotel contracting language. Professionalism, positive attitude and a team player is a must. Strong communication skills, both oral and written are key. Previous experience in developing, managing and reporting data is a plus.

• Secures and contracts group business, to include room sales, food and beverage sales and meeting space needs.

• Create, send and collect request for proposals (RFPs), hotel contracts for group and transient business

• Negotiate hotel contracts for the university while following procurement guidelines

• Proactively research online rates and compare to ATI room blocks

• Manage various hotel, room block, key contact data, and financial data

• Manage university transient preferred program

• Assist with vendor, client and customer calls and issues, as required

• Perform industry research and make recommendations pertinent to client needs

• Work effectively with team members from various departments and locations

• Develop relationships and work effectively with key hotel and university contacts

• Prioritize multiple projects and deadlines to ensure all are completed on time

• Maintain strong relationships and works closely with hotels, hotel brands and hotel national sales contacts.

• Sales analysis and reconciliation

• Manage bill reconciliation for groups

• Client reporting: provide daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual reports as prescribed by management detailing outcomes, issues, and strategies.

• Provide other tasks as necessary to assure success of the program, as requested by the Director, University Hotel Programs.

You Have These

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and experience is required.

• Two or more years of related business, sales and hotel experience preferred.

• Experience with evaluating hotel contracts and negotiating mutually beneficial agreements.

• Past history of developing relationships with existing and potential clients and partners, resulting in financial or other benefits to the organization.

• Industry knowledge or familiarity of end-to-end travel lifecycle, hotel operations, meeting/events and contracts preferred. Understands the issues and requirements that drive the industry and the market.

• Oral communication: The ability to communicate information and ideas to other people verbally. This competency includes effectively speaking to groups and individuals, making formal presentations, and listening to others.

• Written communication: The ability to communicate information and ideas to others in written form. The ability to comprehend information and ideas in written form. The competency includes effective writing and reading.

How we work:

Endeavor is at the center of sports, media, entertainment, and fashion and is a largely relationship-based business. To foster an environment of collaboration, develop our future talent, and build on relationships across leadership, peers, and teams, we work from the office 4 days per week/in a remote capacity. We see immeasurable value internally and throughout the core of the businesses we support.

Don’t meet every single requirement? We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.