Business Development Representative – Tour Guide Partnerships
Location: Portugal, remote
Position Type: Full-time, permanent
Industry: Travel and tourism
Are you passionate about the travel industry? Do you have a knack for spotting talent, building authentic relationships, and driving growth?
Our client is the world's leading business-to-business travel platform, providing managed travel, expense, and meeting solutions to corporations globally.
We are looking for a dynamic Business Development Representative (BDR) – Tour Guide Partnerships to expand our network of world-class tour guides. In this role, you will be the driving force behind our local partner acquisition—sourcing, vetting, and onboarding top-tier guides, local guide associations, and university tourism departments to ensure our guests get the absolute best experiences.
About the Role
As a BDR for Tour Guide Partnerships, you will own the top of the funnel for our partner network. You will proactively research and screen candidates across multiple channels, build institutional relationships, and present curated shortlists to management. This is a hybrid role blending recruitment, business development, and relationship management.
- Key ResponsibilitiesProactive Sourcing: Discover exceptional tour guides through local directories, social media, guide marketplaces, tourism offices, and word-of-mouth referrals.
- University & Institutional Outreach: Engage with university tourism departments, faculty, and student tourism clubs to identify emerging talent and program alumni.
- Candidate Research & Screening: Investigate backgrounds, language skills, certifications, and social proof. Conduct structured screening interviews to assess storytelling ability, route knowledge, and safety practices.
- Assessment & Pipeline Management: Score candidates against defined criteria (e.g., guest ratings, availability) and maintain a highly organized, ranked pipeline in our CRM.
- Shortlist & Handoff: Prepare concise profiles and recommendations, presenting shortlisted guides to management with clear pros/cons.
- Partnership Development: Negotiate basic commercial terms, launch pilot partnerships, and assist with onboarding logistics (contracts, pricing guidance, scheduling).
- Continuous Optimization: Test new sourcing channels, track weekly pipeline metrics, and gather feedback from pilot tours to constantly refine our selection criteria.
What You Bring
- Required Qualifications: 1–3 years of experience in business development, recruiting, partnerships, or hospitality/tourism operations.
- Excellent communication skills with a comfort level for both phone/video interviews and boots-on-the-ground field outreach.
- Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple candidate pipelines simultaneously.
- Negotiation skills: Comfortable discussing basic commercial terms and documenting agreements.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience working with tour operators, DMCs, travel marketplaces, or university career services.
- Multilingual capabilities (or experience evaluating multilingual talent).
- Direct experience onboarding independent contractors or freelance talent.
- Familiarity with local licensing and certification requirements for tour guides.
Core Competencies:
- Research & Assessment: Ability to rapidly verify credentials and use structured scoring.
- Relationship-Building: Professionalism to engage educators, associations, and independent creators alike.
Success Metrics
Your impact will be measured by:
- The volume of qualified guides sourced monthly.
- Shortlist-to-partnership conversion rates.
- Time-to-onboard metrics.
- Guide satisfaction and guest ratings during pilot phases.
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive base salary + performance bonuses tied to successful partner onboarding.
- Travel allowance for in-person evaluations, field research, and networking events.
- Comprehensive training and ongoing professional development.
- A flexible workflow balancing remote work and dynamic fieldwork.