British Airways Holidays
Head of Long Haul & Head of Short Haul (2 roles)
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Who we are 🩵
We’re IAG Loyalty, one organisation with two ambitious, growing divisions across Loyalty and Holidays. Each has its own goals, strategy and team, but together we’re united by a shared vision: to create a more rewarding world of travel and experiences.
Our Holidays division, including British Airways Holidays, connects customers to thousands of destinations worldwide through seamless, end to end travel experiences.
Our Loyalty division is home to Avios, the global loyalty currency, enabling millions of members to collect and spend rewards across travel, retail and financial services.
We’re on an exciting journey of growth and transformation. We’re going places.
The opportunity ✨
Two leadership opportunities to shape the future of one of the UK's most diverse holiday destination portfolios are rare.
Our Product & Sourcing team is at a pivotal point. Ambitious growth plans and continued investment in technology mean we're strengthening our existing leadership capability. We are recruiting for two equivalent leadership roles—Head of Long Haul and Head of Short Haul. Roles that have a clear mandate to accelerate change, deliver the next phase of our destination strategies and embed new ways of working, while building on the team's strong foundations. Working together, these roles will shape the future of the destination portfolio with each leading their own major portfolios.
Reporting to the Head of Product & Sourcing, you'll lead either our Long Haul or Short Haul destination portfolio, its strategic portfolio management and sourcing strategy. This principally includes the British Airways Holidays brand but will broaden to encompass other markets and brands over time.
Few roles offer this genuine opportunity to transform how the business makes decisions about product, sourcing and commercial priorities. You will have a remit to shape strategy, modernise workflows, embrace automation and support the use of AI and new technology.
It’s a chance to make a measurable commercial difference, in an area where there is significant scope to unlock further growth. To identify where the significant future growth opportunities exist, where investment should be focused, defining the direction, and then building the capability, ways of working, team performance and commercial outcomes to make it happen.
Working closely with your Destination Head of counterpart and the broader leadership team, you will lead your team through this transformation. Ensuring they are commercially focused, customer-led, adaptable and aligned to the evolving Product & Sourcing operating model. As a member of the Product and Sourcing Leadership team, alongside leaders from Enablement and Product Development, you will build a collaborative leadership environment, to deliver shared strategic outcomes.
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We are based in Crawley and work a hybrid model of two days in the office and three from home. Travel will be required as needed. You must have a flexible approach and willing to travel regularly throughout the year to support business priorities and stakeholder engagement.
What you’ll get up to 🌠
Drive growth and portfolio performance
- Lead destination strategies for your area, defining where the biggest growth opportunities lie and turning market, product and commercial insight into clear priorities.
- Drive profitable growth by improving how destinations are selected, developed and managed to increase commercial and customer performance.
- Prioritise effectively across a broad destination portfolio, focusing resources where they will create the greatest value.
Lead commercial strategy and partnerships
- Shape contracting approaches, challenging existing methods and identifying the most efficient and commercially effective ways to secure product.
- Step into key partner negotiations where senior leadership is needed, building strategic relationships and helping unlock growth opportunities.
- Champion transformation while maintaining BAU, ensuring day-to-day delivery continues while new ways of working, technologies and processes are embedded
Lead a team through the next stage of transformation
- Lead and develop a high-performing team, creating clarity, pace and accountability while guiding people through ongoing change.
- Help the team build on strong foundations, raising capability and commercial impact over time.
- Act as a collaborative leader within the leadership team, contributing to shared outcomes, supporting joined-up decision-making and helping build a more unified function.
What we need from you 💡
Leadership and change
- You'll be an experienced people leader, capable of bringing teams together around a shared direction and creating momentum in a changing environment.
- You'll have experience shaping and driving organisational growth, change and evolution, setting the direction for your teams and leading them through transformation while maintaining strong performance.
- You'll be comfortable operating with ambiguity, able to make progress where priorities, structures or ways of working are evolving.
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Commercial and strategic leadership
- You'll bring a strong commercial mindset, with a track record of delivering measurable growth across sales, profit, margin or portfolio performance.
- You'll be able to balance strategic thinking with execution, identifying future opportunities while ensuring strong delivery today.
- You'll have experience making decisions across complex portfolios, knowing where to invest, where to optimise and where to challenge existing approaches.
- You'll bring experience in product strategy, sourcing strategy or both, with the breadth to operate credibly across the full remit of the role.
Influence and stakeholder management
- You'll be a credible senior leader, able to build trust quickly and communicate with authority both internally and externally.
- You'll be collaborative by nature, working across teams to align priorities, solve problems and deliver shared outcomes.
- You'll be persuasive and influential, comfortable challenging constructively and helping others move from ideas to action.
Experience and mindset
- You'll have held a senior destinations, product, sourcing or commercial leadership role within travel. Bringing a strong product and destination knowledge, along with a proven understanding of how to build, manage and grow a successful portfolio.
- You'll be pragmatic and delivery-focused, combining long-term thinking with the ability to keep execution moving at pace.
- You'll be motivated by opportunities to improve how things work, embracing automation, AI and new technologies to unlock smarter growth.
Both Head of Short Haul and Head of Long Haul are available. To ensure we consider the strongest talent across both opportunities, applications are through a single advert. Apply once and you will automatically be considered for both roles.
We will close the role by the end of Friday 24th July.
Diversity and Inclusion
Our vision is to create a more rewarding world of travel and experiences. Delivering that requires diverse thinking and inclusive leadership.
We are committed to building a workplace where people feel they belong and are valued for their perspective. Inclusion drives better decisions, stronger performance and more innovative outcomes.
We actively encourage applications from people with different experiences and backgrounds, and are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is fair, inclusive and accessible.
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