STAR Advocate (Celebrity Cruises Reservations Group Team)

Join our Celebrity Cruises Wichita Campus Trade Sales & Support Team!

Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., is one of the world's leading and revolutionary cruise lines. The company operates under the Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises brands. Currently the fleet has 35 ships in service visiting over 280 attractive destinations. Combine your experience and sense of adventure by joining our exciting land-based team of employees. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., is pleased to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

Position Summary:

The Celebrity STAR Advocate position will support all reservation and group booking sales and service for the brand's North America top trade partners in a high volume, fast paced environment including full support of any Loyalty and post sailing Guest Relations issues as needed. This self-contained team functions as a one stop desk for the select agencies they support and is responsible for delivering best in industry service to these agencies while partnering with Sales to grow this business. This position is required to employ broad judgment and critical thinking skills to handle exception requests and problem resolutions and is universally capable to support any role within the Celebrity TS&S ranks and is responsible for the greatest amount of revenue generation per agent within the department.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Provides best in industry service to the brand's top travel partners
• Acts as an ambassador for the brand and maintains an expert level of knowledge about all aspects of the brand's products, ships, and programs including but not limited to ChoiceAir, Xpeditions, CruiseTours, BookNGo, Celebrity Vacations, etc.
• Handles all brand related sales and service related calls from select top travel partners as a one stop shop to support their individual and group business
• Handles all email/fax/mail correspondence and actions reports that pertain to these partners relative to their bookings
• Manages all group business including proactively consulting on all booked groups as needed to ensure successful group management. This includes making outbound contacts to the agency for key milestone deliverables, foreseeing any potential issue that may present a future challenge and mitigating it, and coordinating any onboard function or amenity deliveries for all groups as needed
• Processes enrollments for guests and provides information pertaining to membership, fulfillment of membership, collateral and problem resolution for Celebrity's Captain's Club program
• Researches and resolves complex issues or travel partner/guest complaints which may involve complex accounting, pricing, inventory, promotions, service failures, onboard issues, and/or system issues
• Performs other duties as required. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position. Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management

Financial Responsibilities:

This position has no budget or expense responsibility, however is tasked with a revenue responsibility (selling bookings, upselling to higher valued inventory, and supplemental products such as air, pre/post hotels, tours, onboard revenue, etc.) for both volume and quality.

This position will be empowered to handle resolutions which may include pricing adjustments deemed appropriate for service recovery and to maximize guest retention. This may include special faring and the ability to approve or deny a request for exception to company policies and guidelines for reservations.

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree (BA) preferred or equivalent combination of education and experience/training in sales, customer service, loyalty, or group reservations.

Knowledge and Skills:

LANGUAGE: Strong verbal and written communication skills. Ability to write reports, memos and business correspondence. Ability to read and comprehend complicated instructions, short correspondence, memos and procedure manuals. Ability to effectively present information in one-on-one and small group situations to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization. Must be able to clearly speak and articulate in the English language with a professional, warm, and engaging tone.

INTERPERSONAL: Ability to work, interact, and communicate with external/internal customers at all levels. Ability to build and maintain successful business relationships with the most valued external customers as well as co-workers in order to successfully close business and service customers needs.

MATHMATICAL: Ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals. Ability to calculate figures and amounts such as discounts, commissions, and percentages. Ability to understand and explain a complex group accounting.

REASONING ABILITY: Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out instructions furnished in written, oral or diagram form. Ability to deal with problems involving multiple variables in various situations.

DECISION MAKING: Ability to make decisions in situations where multiple variables and tight deadlines exist, assess complex situations and make mutually beneficial decisions where limited standardization exists, and assess the most complex and non-routine situations.

SYSTEMS: Knowledge of RCL reservations and groups systems and supplemental work systems required. Microsoft Word and Lotus Notes experience preferred.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those requirements employees must meet to perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodations. While performing job functions the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, write, review and type reports, compile data, operate a pc, communicate, listen, and assess information. The employee may move about the office complex, may travel to other office locations and may lift, push, pull or move 10 to 15 pounds. Visual requirement include distant, close and color vision, and ability to adjust focus

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Employees are expected to be able to work any 40 hour per week schedule which may include evening and weekend hours.