Senior Business Controller - Travel and Tourism

SUMMARY:
Interest in travel industry, e-commerce, technology developments

POSITION INFO:

Our client is a fast-growing and leading premium travel tourism group in sub-Saharan Africa with market positions in the mid to high-end segments of personalised leisure travel and leading positions in sub-segments of the market (camp operations, itinerary booking software, etc). On the ground, it has a presence in 4 African countries and international sales marketing offices in SA, UK, US. It operates a portfolio of 20 high-end camps and lodges in some of Africa’s most iconic wildlife destinations and operates a fast-growing tour operating a business in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Company makes substantial long term contributions to the protection of Africa’s unique wildlife and ecosystems, to the development of the livelihoods of local communities It also implements extensive development programs for young talent in these communities. It also operates an integrated leading online travel agent, offering tailormade itineraries across sub-Saharan Africa for travelers based on their preferences. It operates a proprietary itinerary booking platform, hosting > 2 000 products, with the potential to become a leading booking platform in the industry.                               

ROLE SUMMARY

We are looking for an energetic Senior Business Controller, ideally with a strong interest in the travel industry, e-commerce, technology developments who likes to join a fast-growing safari travel company with high-end safari camps & lodges as well as a strong tour operating footprint in Sub- Sarahan Africa supported by a state of art itinerary booking platform and expert sales teams. In this role, you will be supporting the CFO as well the commercial directors of the business units with commercial business and related financial recommendations, analytics as well as assist leadership in key commercial strategy decisions.  

You will fulfil an important bridge function between platform developers, business Intelligence, finance and commercial teams to optimize the group data commercial strategies as well related decision making as well as prepare reports for board and shareholders.

In your role, you will manage the data scientist and business intelligence analysts with data structuring, data capturing as well as converting that to meaningful commercial data which can be used in forming commercial decisions and present them to executive management and board.

Given the growth and developments ongoing, we need an ambitious self-driven person who can run complex projects and assignments with multiple departments & stakeholders – whereby systems, commercial, business analytics, and financial aspects overlap and are capable to bring these to the finish line. You are at the very heart of what ‘value-add finance’ is about in the safari travel industry.

You will work closely with an executive management team with commercial board reporting, commercial budgeting and related monthly reporting requirements.

You are responsible for database management and BI solutions for all users of the in house booking platform and sales system as well as supports the integration of different data sources into one “data lake” per member/user as well as supports data integrity.

You will have a small team of [1] data scientists and [2] BI analysts [1] junior revenue manager as well as will work closely with the development team and commercial/finance team.

The role will be based in Cape Town, but optionality to partly work in the UK as well as travel to East Africa.

ORGANISATIONAL CHART - REPORTING STRUCTURE

FUNCTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES 

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