Director, It - Four Seasons Yachts

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is a global, luxury hotel management company. We manage over 120 hotels and resorts and 50 private residences in 47 countries around the world and growing.

Central to Four Seasons employee experience and social impact programming is the company’s commitment to supporting cancer research, and the advancement of diversity, inclusion, equality and belonging at Four Seasons corporate offices and properties worldwide. At Four Seasons, we are powered by people and our culture enables everything we do.

The Director of Four Seasons IT, Yachts, is the lead IT representative for all Four Seasons technology for Hospitality Yacht Operations shoreside and on board the Yachts. The Director will liaise between Four Seasons and the Yacht operating partner to plan, design, build, implement and operate Four Seasons IT supporting the Four Seasons Yachts line of business – with a focus on guest and employee experience technology used for the Hospitality operation. The candidate is highly skilled and experienced in developing and operating integrated technology solutions that will meet Four Seasons policy and services obligations whist delivering cost effective and operationally successful software and devices.

The Director, Hospitality IT is an expert in Four Seasons core technologies and will provide technical expertise across all categories of Cruise/Yacht industry software. The Director will provide direct support to Operations Departments’ that use Four Seasons technology to ensure software and devices are operating as per requirements.

The Director is organized with a proven track record of planning and orchestrating overlapping and highly integrated cross-functional workstreams. The director is an expert in planning, organizing, problem solving, influencing and relationship management.

This role is based in Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Miami, Four Seasons Yacht Offices, reporting to the Vice President - IT New Openings, Corporate IT. This role involves interactions with primarily internal stakeholders at various levels.

What You’ll Be Doing

Development & Operational Leadership of Four Seasons Technology for Yachts:

• Represents Yachts at all technology workstreams for the development and operations of technology for Yachts with a focus on guest experience digital, guest profile and employee experience
• Oversees all IT budgets for Yachts including people and technology
• Expert in guest and employee experience technology facilitated by Four Seasons and how it is maximized for use with Yachts
• Overall responsibility for development and operational support of technology facilitated by Four Seasons supporting Yachts with a focus on guest and employee experience for Hospitality Operations.

Technology Planning and Implementation:

• Maintain the critical path for all technology systems from Four Seasons.
• Understands and is expert in Four Seasons core platforms. Stays current with FS IT strategy to ensure adoption at Yacht where applicable.
• Design and implement technology to streamline all internal operations and help optimize their strategic benefits.
• Create resource plans and orchestrate internal and partner resources to execute project plans
• Overall responsibility for the successful installation and scheduling of technology including testing, commissioning, integrations, and configuration. The initial focus in 2023 will be all technology required to support onshore Four Seasons guest and employee experience.
• Design and customize technological systems and platforms to improve customer and employee experience whist ensuring Four Seasons IT security, privacy and compliance requirements are met.
• Oversees technology through all phases, including pre-commencement, sea trials and operations

Procurement & Vendor Management:

• Monitor and manage contractual obligations of all service provides including escalation and oversight of incidents and/or non-performance of brand obligations.
• Partner with procurement resources within the Four Seasons to manage each phase of the selection process including bid and analysis, vendor selection / evaluation and contract negotiation

Hospitality IT Operations:

• IT Change Management

• Ensures the following quality services to Yachts users for technology facilitated by Four Seasons:

  • Service Desk / Help Desk

  • Knowledge management

  • Incident & Problem Management

  • Root cause analysis

  • IT Change Management

• Incident & Problem Management
• The above operations will be delivered from different sources including a) Four Seasons Central IT, b) directly by Four Seasons Hospitality Yacht IT team, c) third party vendors and d) Four Seasons Yacht Partner
• Root cause analysis
• Service Desk / Help Desk
• Knowledge management

Travel:

• This position will require travelling to various locations 25% of the time

Who You Are

• Considers the long-term as well as immediate short-term outcomes and actions.
• Sets and achieves high standards and goals reaching beyond what is required, encourages others to do the same.
• Develops or uses systems to organize, prioritize and keep track of tasks and deliverables (e.g. calendar, to-do lists, etc).
• Tailors messages to meet the needs of different audiences, generations, cultures and levels.
• Regularly communicates department results to celebrate successes and share learning.
• Assigns project responsibilities to team members and performs quality reviews, coaches others in planning practices and assessing progress against plan.
• Can multi-task and juggle several competing or conflicting priorities and delegate appropriately.
• Strong vendor negotiations, commercial and contract management experience with legal
• High degree of self-motivation (strong initiative)
• Very strong conceptual, analytical, judgmental and communication abilities are critical.
• Excellent project management experience
• Negotiates win-win solutions by being prepared to give and take, calculates, and identifies mutually beneficial arguments to build ownership of the solutions and appeal to another’s interests or reason.
• Uses indirect means to influence; identifies opinion formers within the informal organization and spends time developing a network of contracts to help influence others
• Acts in advance to identify and address work overload issues, plans how to deal with peaks and troughs.
• Seeks to understand the politics and business practices in AsiaPac, EMEA, North, South and Central Americas. Considers potential obstacles to achieve stated business outcomes in a specific country.
• Translates complex and difficult information into messages that are easy to understand.
• Questions existing practices and procedures and tries different approaches to improve results.
• Anticipates likely objections and builds responses into the argument/approach
• Recognizes when to escalate appropriate or specific situations to the next higher level of expertise
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Looks at best practices from others to determine if there is alignment with desired outcomes according to procedures and policies and organization’s brand strategy.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Strong vendor negotiations, commercial and contract management experience with legal
• Vendor management, especially with professional services

What You Bring

• Minimum five years management experience in luxury hospitality IT
• Employee Experience collaboration (Microsoft O365)
• Effective process management ensuring data governance and data quality
• Experience with Salesforce
• College or University degree in technology or related field
• Experience supporting global, regional and local IT compliance including privacy
• Experience with Guest Experiential Digital (.com, Mobile App, Chat)
• Expert in Data Engineering in Microsoft Azure Environment + Toolsets (ADLA, ADF, Synapse, Data Bricks, AAS, Cosmos DB, FunctionApps, Logic Apps etc)

All internal applications must be submitted and approved in Workday by June 1, 2023.

Four Seasons is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.