Reservations Officer
Emirates Airlines
Total years of experience :24 years, 4 Months
Job Responsibilities
In liaison with the Reservations Manager, co-ordinate the implementation of procedures aimed at improving productivity and performance of staff and the unit. This includes ongoing review of internal processes and procedures and providing recommendations for process improvements and cost savings.
Implement action plans for achieving targets (servicing of bookings and FIT /Group reservations enquiries / sales on arrival) whilst ensuring service turn around times are maintained and all possible revenue opportunities maximised.
- Monitor and control assigned pre-payment accounts/groups and payment for EK products and highlight any irregularities from the guidelines to Manager for review and action.
- Proactively analyse assigned credit accounts and resolve all short payments either by correcting files or clarifying to Tour Operators and EK Outstations such that the outstanding ageing does not exceed 04 months and accounting for all files is in line with laid down guidelines, respectively
- Develop and maintain healthy professional business relationships with the travel trade for the benefit of the department by establishing regular contact with local suppliers as well as Reservation and Accounts staff of Tour Operator companies and EK Outstations.
- Analyse all in-resort client and passenger feedback and directly resolve or delegate to Senior Tours Consultants where applicable, in order to ensure all issues are handled in a professional manner whilst keeping Arabian Adventures and EK interests in mind. This includes providing feedback to Manager and other units about performance of assigned accounts, their practices or any irregularities.
- To carry out all unit/department-related tasks delegated by Manager or Management in a manner that these are completed within the specified or expected time-frames whilst maintaining high levels of accuracy.
- Generating quarterly reports for consortiums such as Virtuoso, Signature and Ensemble to determine the productivity.
- Monitoring productivity levels for all potential tour operators on a monthly basis and reporting the same to the business development team.
- Directly overseeing the performance and productivity of a team of Senior Tours Consultants to meet the set standards and maintain the highest quality of service to our Principals (Tour Operators/Travel Agents/Emirates Offices worldwide) and passengers.
FIT
- Plan the monthly schedule and annual leave plans of assigned staff in a manner that service delivery and operational efficiency is not affected.
- Ensure the annual and interim performance review process is conducted for all assigned staff as per the laid down guidelines as well as corporate, departmental and unit level policies and regulations are understood, implemented and monitored at all times, by both the job holder and the staff assigned, while maintaining productivity and morale.
Leisure Groups
- Attract and capture the client's interest in the destination by making quality, cost effective, and detailed proposals (within local laws and regulations) resulting in competitive, innovative/creative tailor made programs. Conduct regular hotel/suppliers inspections to keep up to date with the latest developments in the destination and to ensure that proposals are current.
- Create operational plans prior to the clients' arrival, liaising with operations team and suppliers; supervise and support field operations of each client / group, pre-empt and resolve problems so that the client has a seamless experience.
- Independently plan, schedule, organise and execute groups from commencement to conclusion; ensure high quality service throughout the customer experience from the quotation stage, site inspections, oversee the operation and review of the group experience.
• Liaising between worldwide tour operators and hotels for any incoming hotel requests in UAE.
• Preparing quotations based on the requests received from tour operators and executing the same and once confirmed by the tour operators sending back confirmation details.
• Arranging additional services with respective hotels as per client’s request and confirming to clients.
• Arranging Hotel reservation and planning holiday in UAE for individual leisure bookings received through tour operator
• Organizing additional services which include Meet & Assist on arrival, transfers, tours and excursions such as Desert safari, Dhow cruise, camping trips, exclusive trips, expeditions and historic trips for leisure guest.
• Arranging visas for guest.
• Producing monthly reports.
• Handling restaurant reservations for guest on request.
• Administrative duties like attending calls, faxing, filing and forwarding invoices to Accounts.
• Updating tours operators on special offers.
• Updating tour operators on Stop Sales for various hotels in U.A.E.
• Regular tour and hotel inspections.
• Handling confidential airline contracts of major airline companies like United Airlines, British Airways, American Airlines, Emirates Airlines, Air France, Air India, Cathay Pacific, Gulf Air, KLM, Eva Air, Air Sahara, and so on.
• Training new recruits in the working and understanding airline contracts and fares
• Handling confidential ground fares which include updating records of hotel fares, to mainly Mauritius, Sri Lanka USA, Canada and Maldives.
• Preparing flyers which are sent across to various agents in UK.
• Troubleshooting any query's with regards to air fare contracts in the UK.
• Assisting reservations for any query’s over air fares entered in the system.
• Maintaining the database, by loading Air fares in the In house software called Chameleon.
• Updating or loading fares to Hotels in Maldives, Srilanka, Goa, Delhi for Grounds Department.
• Handling queries over bookings actioned by the reservation staff
Maintain and develop good relationship with customers through personal contact or meetings or via telephone etc.
• Has been actively involved in briefing teams with its current market and future markets.
• Gathering market and customer info to enable negotiations regarding variations in prices, delivery and customer specifications to their managers.
• Help management in forthcoming products and discuss on special promotions.
• Review own performance and aim at exceeding their targets.
• Record sales and order information and report the same to the sales department.
• Provide accurate feedback on future buying trends to their respective employers.
This was a 1 year course which covered languages like COBOL, PASCAL, FOXPRO, SYSTEM ANALYSIS. We also had a project which was part of our years work.