Director, Customer Acquisition and Partnerships - South Asia

Description

This is your chance to be part of a Marketing team that attracts customers to Hilton through strong storytelling, top-rated rewards, and unique customer experiences and partnerships. Our Loyalty and Customer Engagement team drives customer growth for Hilton by leading the charge to acquire, retain and nurture direct relationships at scale. The team focuses on growing customer lifetime value by delivering against a customer-centric engagement strategy to ensure we connect meaningfully with our target audience on touchpoints across Hilton, partner and 3rd party platforms – establishing awareness, initiating consideration and driving preference for Hilton and our award-winning Hilton Honors loyalty program. 

With 180 million members and growing, Hilton Honors is a core component of Hilton’s focus on forming direct, one-to-one relationships with its customers. Honors is more than just a rewards program, it enables personalised access to the best Hilton has to offer and provides accessible rewards that empower guests with unprecedented choice and control. 

As the Director, Customer Acquisition and Partnerships for South Asia, you’ll apply your entrepreneurial mindset to formulate, establish and activate a multi-year strategy to drive both Hilton customer and Hilton Honors member growth in India. You will exploit all opportunities, including, as a key focus, identifying, establishing and managing strategic partnerships that fast-track our ambitions to grow and nurture direct relationships at scale. The type of partnerships can include but not limited to travel, lifestyle, digital platforms, earn and burn, and will drive reach and acquisition, deliver impactful customer experiences and allow Hilton’s customer and Honors member proposition to stand-out in a manner that is truly distinct and relevant in India.  

Reporting to the Senior Director of Loyalty and Customer Engagement for APAC, you'll be tasked with leading our ambitions to setup a truly customer-centric acquisition strategy in India; one that rooted in a deep understanding of India's customer and partnership landscape to ensure Hilton and Hilton Honors shows up with authenticity and impact. Your leadership and expertise will shape our trajectory in India and you will work closely with APAC functional (Loyalty, Customer Engagement, Enterprise and Brand Marketing, Media, Technology) and India regional teams to grow, retain and nurture our customer and loyalty base.    

A true self-starter, you will fully embrace the challenge of working independently and creatively to build and execute on our long-term vision to establish Hilton and Hilton Honors as the preferred choice for Indian travellers to dream, plan, shop and book.

What will I be doing? 

As the Director, Customer Acquisition and Partnerships - South Asia, you will take the initiative to perform the following tasks to the highest standards:

• Deliver on a multi-year customer and Hilton Honors growth strategy for India – formulating the strategy, defining the milestones, and leading the execution and measurement of our roadmap to accelerate customer acquisition and Honors enrolments. You will identify white space opportunities to drive deeper acquisition penetration with key segments and new growth opportunities to attract, convert and enroll potential customers.   
• Stand-up a partnership strategy for India, with the aim to identify the right brands and right opportunities to negotiate, contract and activate in order to reach, acquire and engage customers at scale. These initiatives will tightly align with Indian customer behaviour and preferences in order to resonate with our target audience and push Hilton and Hilton Honors to the forefront of their minds.
• Be a strong customer advocate – help to shape the evolving value proposition and definition of loyalty at Hilton. You will consult global and regional initiatives across customer engagement and loyalty to ensure we are showing up in with authenticity and impact to nurture deeper direct relationships. With your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment and trends, you will help to shape meaningful experiences at each stage of the customer life cycle.
• Champion the wider Customer Engagement and Loyalty team, its strategy and priorites with our regional corporate, hotel and owner communities. Manage and influence key stakeholder perspectives on the India customer and loyalty roadmap to drive buy-in and support to fuel our efforts and initiatives.
• Collaborate with APAC Loyalty, Customer Engagement, Enterprise, Brand Marketing, Technology  teams to shape and execute against the customer acquisition and partnership strategy for India. You will partner with the APAC partnership teams to ensure strategic alignment and champion India needs and priorities. You will serve as a lead ‘demand creator’ with our product and technology partners – inform UX across partner channels that enable customers to know, choose and prefer Hilton.

Requirements

What are we looking for?

To successfully fill this role, you should maintain the attitude, behaviors, skills, and values that follow:

• Minimum qualification of BA/BS/Bachelor's Degree.
• Minimum 10 years of in loyalty and customer acquisition.
• Experience in the Indian market is mandatory – a deep understanding of established and emerging trends in Indian customer behavior and preferences.
• Working knowledge of loyalty programmes and member experience delivery – ideally with experience within hospitality, travel or retail.
• Experience in building and executing strategic partnerships is mandatory – a deep understanding of India's partnership landscape, coupled with strong negotiation skills, attention to detail, commercial evaluation.
• Ability to work with new and existing partners to rationalize strategies in order to achieve mutually beneficial, accretive outcomes for all parties.
• Extensive experience creating and maintaining multi-year strategic plans and roadmaps, as well as complex business cases and department budgets.
• Creative thinker and problem solver with a hands-on approach and ability to generate innovative ideas.
• Ability to drive progress independently using shared resources and build towards a sustainable business.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate appropriately at all levels of the organization.
• Strong business acumen with demonstrated ability to think strategically as well as deconstruct a strategy into tactical, executable units of work.
• Strategic eye for business with ability to use data and market intelligence to find new opportunities and improve performance continuously.

What will it be like to work for Hilton?

Hilton is the leading global hospitality company, spanning the lodging sector from luxurious full-service hotels and resorts to extended-stay suites and mid-priced hotels. For nearly a century, Hilton has offered business and leisure travelers the finest in accommodations, service, amenities and value. Hilton is dedicated to continuing its tradition of providing exceptional guest experiences across its global brands. Our vision to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality unites us as a team to create remarkable hospitality experiences around the world every day. And, our amazing Team Members are at the heart of it all!