Virgin Voyages
First Mate Engagement & Experience Manager – UK & International (12-Month Fixed-Term Contract)
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First Mate Engagement & Experience Manager
You’re an educator, a connector, and a curator of experiences. You believe structured engagement builds capability and well-designed experiences strengthen identity, loyalty, and advocacy. As the First Mate Engagement & Experience Manager, you lead structured engagement and distance learning delivery across the UK and International markets. You accelerate onboarding, strengthen advisor capability, and design targeted enablement initiatives aligned to regional commercial priorities. In close partnership with Directors of Sales and Regional Sales Managers, you translate commercial strategy into integrated engagement and experiential programs that elevate confidence, deepen brand connection, and support sustained regional growth. This role blends disciplined delivery with experiential leadership, ensuring that capability, community, and experience operate as one cohesive ecosystem. The role requires travel across the UK to support regional Sales engagement initiatives and experiential activations. In addition to this, significant cross-timezone collaboration with US and international teams should be expected.
This opportunity sets sail as a fully remote role based in the United Kingdom and is offered on a 12-month fixed-term contract.
Essential Responsibilities:
- Lead structured engagement and distance learning programs across UK and International markets, translating commercial strategy into applied selling confidence.
- Accelerate onboarding through clearly defined activation journeys that reduce friction and build early advisor momentum.
- Deliver high-impact virtual engagement sessions that strengthen product fluency and commercial confidence.
- Partner closely with Directors of Sales and Regional Sales Managers to align engagement and experiential initiatives to regional commercial priorities.
- Identify capability gaps across markets and design targeted enablement interventions that address regional needs.
- Design and deliver First Mate Experiences that reinforce brand positioning, strengthen advisor relationships, and integrate into the wider engagement ecosystem.
- Lead UK ship experience strategy and coordinate immersive activations aligned to commercial priorities, including incentives, day visits, and familiarisation experiences.
- Travel countrywide to support regional Sales engagement initiatives, priority account activations, trade shows, and experiential moments where required.
- Maintain an active presence across Social Engagement channels, responding to advisor questions, contributing to discussions, and driving sustained interaction that amplifies engagement and experiential initiatives.
- Capture insight from advisor and experiential interactions to inform continuous improvement and strengthen regional activation strategy.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Trade Marketing, Brand, Studio, and Sales teams to ensure engagement, experience, and platform integration remain aligned.
- Operate effectively across timezones, balancing UK, US, and international priorities with commercial discipline.
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Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
- 6+ years in travel, hospitality, experiential marketing, engagement, trade activation, or sales enablement; cruise industry experience preferred.
- Deep understanding of the travel trade ecosystem within the UK and international markets, including consortia, host networks, and regional sales structures.
- Demonstrated experience designing and delivering experiential activations or trade engagement initiatives aligned to commercial priorities.
- Proven success partnering with Directors of Sales and Regional Sales leaders to execute integrated engagement strategies.
- Skilled facilitator with the ability to command both virtual and in-person environments.
- Strong commercial acumen, able to translate regional sales priorities into structured engagement and experiential programmes.
- Experience using data and insight to refine activation strategy and measure impact.
- Ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders across Sales, Marketing, Brand, and Studio teams.
- Willingness and ability to travel extensively across the UK to support regional Sales engagement initiatives.
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What Matters to Us:
At Virgin, your personality matters as much as how good you are at what you do. We want you to bring it to our hangout spot and help make the place even better. So, we won’t be surprised to hear that when people talk about you they say you are clever, on top of it, able to think ahead, intuitive, passionate and someone people respect and enjoy working with because you make things happen.
Virgin Voyages is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages applications from qualified, eligible applicants regardless of their sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital status, pregnancy and maternity. Our greatest strength comes from our ability to come together as unique individuals -- we seek to always embrace and celebrate our differences, providing an inclusive workplace environment that allows you to be your best self.
Virgin Voyages is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at Virgin Voyages via-email, the Internet or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from Virgin Voyages HR/Recruitment will be deemed the sole property of Virgin Voyages. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Virgin Voyages as a result of the referral or through other means.
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