Guest Experience Manager

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF OUR GUEST EXPERIENCE MANAGER A call comes in before 7:30 AM — a guest locked out, with a group arriving behind them in an hour. Your Specialist is already on the line, pulling up the access code and looping in Dispatch, and it's handled before you even see it in the queue. This is Guest Experience at Homes by Villatel: every interaction happens by phone, chat, or email, and your job isn't to take that call — it's to have built a team, and an AI agent program, that doesn't need you to. By mid-morning, you're spotting the pattern behind a handful of unrelated tickets that all trace back to the same gap — because the real work here is redesigning the process, not answering the same call five times. A quick huddle and a proposed fix, that's the standard. At Homes by Villatel, the Guest Experience Manager leads a remote-first team that never rarely a guest face-to-face but still delivers a five-star experience through every call and resolution — proof that hospitality is about care, not proximity. If you coach and treat "good enough" as a starting point — this is your next role. CORE RESPONSIBILITIES 1. Team Leadership & Development Lead a team of Specialists responsible for both direct guest service and the day-to-day management of Villatel's AI agents. This team operates at a higher caliber than a traditional call-handling group, and the Manager is expected to recruit, develop, and retain accordingly. Build agent capability so the team resolves guest issues independently. Escalations to the Manager should be the exception; a rising escalation rate is a coaching gap, not a workload norm. Conduct structured one-on-one check-ins with direct reports no less than bi-weekly; document all performance conversations. 2. Guest Experience Oversight Establish escalation frameworks, decision-making authority, and documentation standards that enable agents to handle complex guest situations without Manager involvement. Hold the GE team accountable for complete, accurate ticketing of all guest issues, requests, and resolutions, and for efficient cross-departmental communication between Guest Experience, Dispatch, Maintenance, and other operational teams. Identify and proactively surface communication breakdowns between departments; do not wait for other teams to flag gaps. 3. Group Arrivals & Event Coordination Own Guest Experience readiness for all group arrivals. Coordinate proactively with the Event Center and Sales from booking confirmation through departure — group needs are never discovered at check-in. Lead pre-arrival planning for every group: unit readiness verification, arrival logistics, special requests, VIP identification, and GE staffing coverage aligned to group volume and event schedules. Conduct a post-departure debrief with Sales and the Event Center after every significant group; feed learnings into GE processes and pre-arrival planning standards. 4. Process Improvement & Project Management This is the defining responsibility of the role and the primary measure of Manager-level performance. Accepting the status quo is not an option. Approach every process, workflow, and system with a critical and inquisitive mindset — questioning whether current methods are the most effective and using common sense, industry knowledge, and Villatel know-how to recommend and implement better approaches. Manage the day-to-day performance of the AI agent program: monitor AI performance, identify failure patterns, and recommend and implement workflow and escalation-logic refinements in partnership with the agent team and IT&E. Apply formal project management discipline to all improvement work: defined scope, milestones, owners, and measurable outcomes. Projects are completed and measured — not started and abandoned. Own the GE workstream within cross-functional initiatives and partner with Dispatch, Maintenance, Housekeeping, and IT&E to drive improvements to completion. Quantify the impact of every improvement — response times, resolution rates, compensation spend, review scores — and report results to leadership. Create and self-assign improvement projects when gaps or opportunities exist. The GE Manager is expected to generate work, not only receive it. When bringing a challenge to leadership, come prepared with proposed solutions. Leadership is available to guide and decide — but the Manager is expected to have applied their own judgment and arrived at a point of view before escalating. 5. Review Response Management (RTR) Ensure timely, thoughtful responses to all guest reviews across applicable platforms through the agent team, leveraging AI and saved templates to maintain quality at scale. RTR is a non-negotiable departmental responsibility that may not lapse regardless of occupancy or operational volume. Monitor response completion rates and quality; escalate any lapse or risk to leadership immediately. 6. Departmental Reporting Provide leadership with a weekly status update covering completed work, active projects, and upcoming priorities, and ensure the department's daily Pulse Report entry is submitted without exception. Deliver a monthly GE performance report to the Head of Operations covering guest satisfaction trends, RTR metrics, compensation spend, AI containment, escalation patterns, and group arrival performance. Reports should carry insight and narrative — not activity logs — and be complete enough that leadership does not need to ask follow-up questions. 7. Administrative & Financial Oversight Approve guest satisfaction compensation within established thresholds; escalate requests exceeding those thresholds. Ensure all adjustments are accurately classified — compensation and folio adjustments are distinct, and misclassification has direct financial impact to Villatel and property owners. Acknowledge all feedback and directives from leadership within 24 hours; respond to all active email threads within 48 hours. Document processes and procedures when directed and deliver within the timeframe given. QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE Extensive hotel, resort, or vacation rental experience is required, including significant tenure in Guest Experience, Front Office, or Guest Services leadership. Candidates without direct hospitality guest experience leadership will not be considered. Minimum 5 years of progressive hospitality leadership experience, including direct management of guest-facing teams. Demonstrated experience coordinating group arrivals, events, or high-touch VIP stays in a hospitality environment. Proven track record of process improvement and project delivery with measurable, quantified outcomes. Comfort operating in a technology-forward environment, including AI-enabled guest service workflows; ability to evaluate, refine, and expand automated tools. Strong analytical and written communication skills; ability to synthesize operational data into executive-ready reporting.