Cape Town Region: Director Revenue & Reservations Cpt posted by Cedar Wood Recruitment

About the Role

We are seeking an exceptional Director Revenue & Reservations to join our client’s team in Cape Town. As a commercially sharp and operationally minded leader with a passion for luxury travel, you will be responsible for shaping commercial strategy, leading a talented 20-person team, and ensuring every guest booking journey is executed flawlessly.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead group-wide revenue optimisation across all camps, lodges, and safari products.
• Drive pricing strategy, inventory control, occupancy optimisation, and booking pace analysis.
• Partner with Sales, Finance, and Operations to maximise RevPAR, ADR, and overall profitability.
• Monitor market trends, competitor positioning, seasonality, and demand forecasting.
• Ensure disciplined management of allocations, stop-sell controls, and channel availability.
• Own all reservations operations across properties and DMC functions.
• Drive consistency, accuracy, and professionalism across every booking interaction.
• Design and maintain SOPs, workflows, and service quality standards.
• Ensure seamless coordination between reservations, operations, guiding, camps, and third-party suppliers.
• Oversee safari logistics including flights, transfers, activities, accommodation movements, and guest itineraries.
• Ensure operational feasibility and smooth handovers from reservations into field operations.
• Improve integration between DMC bookings and property reservations teams.
• Minimise booking errors, operational clashes, and guest-impacting issues.
• Champion technology adoption, automation, and process modernisation across the department.
• Act as departmental lead for PMS, CRM, DMC booking systems, channel managers, and reporting tools.
• Improve data integrity, reporting accuracy, and dashboard visibility across the commercial function.
• Identify opportunities for AI and workflow efficiencies where practical and impactful.
• Lead, mentor, and unify a multi-location team of approximately 20 people.
• Build a culture of accountability, humility, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Develop team capability, succession pipelines, and performance management frameworks.
• Foster strong cross-departmental relationships across Operations, Finance, Sales, Marketing, and Camps.

Requirements

• 10 years in luxury hospitality, safari operations, DMC environments, or high-end travel.
• 5 years in a senior leadership role managing multi-functional, cross-location teams.
• Proven track record in reservations management, revenue/yield optimisation, and operational coordination.
• Experience leading meaningful systems and process improvement initiatives.

Qualifications

• Diploma or Degree in Hospitality Management, Tourism Management, Business, Commerce, or related field.