Vice President, Business Development - Travel, EEMEA

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Vice President, Business Development - Travel, EEMEA

The EEMEA Merchant and Commerce team is looking for a VP, Business Development – Travel Segment to drive transformative growth by leading Mastercard’s commercial strategy across the EEMEA region travel ecosystem. This includes leading and scaling all sales and partnership activities across relevant airlines, hotels, OTAs, TMCs, and other travel-related technology companies, to drive profitable revenue growth, market share expansion and deep strategic relationships.

In this role, this Vice President will shape Mastercard’s relevance in this industry vertical through thought-leadership, embedded payments, digital innovation, co-brand programs and strategic enterprise deals that unlock volume, revenue, and long-term market share. Therefore, the ideal candidate is a seasoned leader with sharp commercial expertise and a global mindset.

This candidate should have a proven track record in translating strategy into actionable growth plans that deliver both near-term impact and long-term enterprise value, deep expertise across the travel and airline ecosystem, and experience owning and scaling revenue portfolios as well as negotiating complex agreements. Guided by a high decency quotient, this Vice President should be able to navigate matrixed environments and build C-level relationships across the travel segment with ease.

Role

• Own the go-to-market and revenue strategy for a portfolio of high-impact travel clients, including global airlines, hotel chains, and digital travel intermediaries.
• Negotiate and oversee complex multi-year deals based on partnership strategies developed in collaboration with travel revenue, distribution, technology and CX leaders across the travel value chain
• Identify and assess new commercial opportunities across the travel value-chain, leveraging Mastercard’s payments and beyond-payments capabilities with innovative ideas
• Lead the design and delivery of differentiated programs, that that drive spend, increased revenue yield, engagement, and retention.
• Orchestrate high-performing, matrixed teams across multi-functional stakeholders, while also engaging as a collaborative partner or contributor when appropriate, to ensure seamless execution.
• Strengthen Mastercard’s brand as a trusted partner to the travel sector through executive-level influence and storytelling.
• Lead, mentor, and develop high-performing teams with a focus on accountability, inclusion, and growth.

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.

The ideal candidate for this position should:

• Bring extensive travel industry expertise from senior commercial roles within airlines and/or the broader travel industry.
• Have demonstrated success in leading multi-million-dollar P&Ls, developing C-level relationships and negotiating high-impact partnership deals.
• Be able to engage and influence C-level clients and internal senior stakeholders across complex, matrixed environments.
• Analytically strong, understands P&L drivers of ecosystem players, and comfortable with business case development, performance forecasting and translating strategy into clear actions.
• Be skilled in leading cross-regional teams and working across internal and external multi-stakeholder groups to execute integrated initiatives.
• Be known for growing talent, fostering inclusion and leading high-performing teams in matrixed settings.
• Innovative and entrepreneurial mindset to understand emerging trends, new innovative solutions to drive value at ecosystem level