Associate Product Manager, Service Optimization

About Us : 

Bringing True Hospitality to the world.

We want to welcome you to a world of bringing True Hospitality to everyone. When you join us at IHG®, you become part of our global family. A welcoming culture of warmth, honesty and a passion for providing True Hospitality.

We pride ourselves on letting your personality and passions shine, recognizing the individual contribution you make and supporting your ambition to learn and create your own career path. In making a difference to our guests and owners, colleagues and communities, every day is a chance to create great and unique experiences, in your own way.

With over 370,000 colleagues in nearly 100 countries sharing our values, there’s countless opportunities at your fingertips.

We’re growing; grow with us.

Your Day to Day: 

Role Purpose

The Associate Product Manager, Service Optimization role at IHG leads the development and launch of innovative solutions tailored to enhance guest experiences across our hotel portfolio. This role involves collaborating cross-functionally to prioritize features, conducting market research, and driving product adoption. Success in this role requires strong stakeholder engagement, analytical skills for performance tracking, and a customer-centric approach. The Associate Product Manager will play a key role in defining the product roadmap and ensuring alignment with business objectives. By fostering strong relationships with internal stakeholders and continuously iterating based on insights gathered, they will contribute to IHG's commitment to delivering exceptional guest experiences worldwide.

Key Accountabilities

• This role will participate in development effort and implementation of product strategy which includes future state based on deep understanding of how the business works, incorporating customer insights, markets, competition, and distribution capabilities as well as the potential “game changing” new functionality and capabilities IHG will require to compete. This should manifest itself in a roadmap of initiatives including small enhancements that the vendor will deliver upon.
• Drive new product development – through the writing of sound business requirements based on capabilities which will define the functionality in the process to capture full perspective in creating “best fit” products
• Manage vendor performance, will set expectations and drive vendor activities across product, future Service Optimization development & steady state BAU processes. This includes vendors beyond IHG’s selected partner where relevant.
• Be the intermediary in between the business stakeholder(s) and the key IHG vendor, responsible for driving request of change in any Contract negotiations or SLA’s as we deploy to current and new regions. 
• Build strong relationships with our core stakeholders, work alongside other organizational teams across Commercial and Technology Product Organization, Property System, Concerto and Business teams such as Franchise & Hotel Operations, Brand and Marketing. 
• Drive business readiness activity to understand the impact to users, support, training, and communications. 
• Manage product lifecycles: continually evaluate product performance and key customer insights and ensure new product needs are identified far enough in advance to address needs before product obsolescence.
• Communicate product information: including product roadmap, specifications, value proposition, sales tools training tools and competitive information to stakeholders. Provide status updates to PMO for regular reporting cycles.
• Measure product performance and lead performance improvement initiatives. Identify and understand the performance drivers and set up ongoing diagnostics and monitoring capabilities once implemented.

What We Need From You: 

Key Skills & Experiences

Education –

Bachelor's or Master's Degree in a relevant field of work or an equivalent combination of education and work related experience.

Experience –

4 to 5 years progressive work related experience with demonstrated proficiency in multiple disciplines/processes with preferred direct hands-on hotel Front Office experience including 2 years’ experience in product management, product development, marketing or operations, with demonstrated travel (hospitality) industry experience and understanding of multiple disciplines/processes related to the position and Hotel System product development experience and/or Service Optimization product experience.

Technical skills and Knowledge –

• Demonstrated project management experience in organizing, planning, and executing development projects from conception through implementation.
• Demonstrated effective verbal and written communication skills for the purpose of providing information to clients, vendors, senior management, and staff.
• Must possess a thorough understanding of how to manage a vendor management to deliver against key expectations. 
• Must possess a good understanding of the Hotel Ecosystem and how on property systems connect to enterprise systems such as Loyalty, how on property fulfilment is critical to the success of guest experiences at the hotel. 
• Proficient knowledge of core Hotel System Products in hospitality such as Service Optimization, PMS (Property Management) Central Reservations. Service Optimization Product knowledge such as Quore, Hotsos would be preferred. 
• Effective organizational, time management and communication skills. 
• Detail oriented, logical, analytical aptitude.

What We Offer: 

We’ll reward all your hard work with a great salary and benefits – including great room discount and superb training.

Join us and you’ll become part of the global IHG family – and like all families, all our individual team members share some winning characteristics. As a team, we work better together – we trust and support each other, we do the right thing and we welcome different perspectives. You need to show us you care, that you notice the little things that make a difference to guests as well as always looking for ways to improve - click here to find out more about us.

At IHG Hotels & Resorts, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. IHG Hotels & Resorts provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to an individual’s, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or familial status, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

IHG is committed to promoting a culture of inclusion where everyone feels safe, respected and valued. We seek talent from all backgrounds to join our teams, and encourage our colleagues to bring their authentic and best selves to work.

Not Applicable for Colorado Applicants.

#LI-YM1

#Hybrid