Job Description

Overview

Seeking a 'grown up' General Manager for Terrible Tours Norwich, expanding to the City after 4 successful years at home Cambridge base. My objective is for this individual to be the de facto day-to-day 'CEO' of this business.

While Cambridge had a number of historic walking tours for tourists, and a couple of slightly more immersive ghost tours, the market is very fragmented and very much focussed on history rather than entertainment. I've previously been an exec in the tourist industry running sales and marketing for Disneyland Paris, and when touring England with my own family have often found the best way for my children to learn about a city (or me for that matter!) has been by making it fun. I lived near Cambridge and studied history there myself. So I'd seen that many other tourist cities have a number of really entertaining and family focussed walking tours - where the walk leader is very much performing rather than just saying, and often adopting a historic persona. But Cambridge did not.

I started the business in Spring 2021 but then found myself being offered something back in the corporate world which for now at least I am doing. After 4 years in Cambridge I am looking to expand to a second city.

The ticketing and financial systems of the business are largely self-managing, so the key tasks are around scheduling tours, and more importantly managing and motivating a team of tour guides to deliver an excellent customer experience.

Responsibilities

- Recruitment of a team of reliable and above all entertaining tour guides. These may be local students, individuals with experience of the local Norwich tourist market, people with experience of performing, teaching, or other public speaking

- The training, monitoring and motivation of the team to ensure Terrible Tours retains its reputation for excellent and entertaining customer service.

- The intelligent management of tour scheduling and the development as appropriate of additional tours

- The development of partnerships with local businesses in order to drive traffic and add value for Terrible Tours guests

- The development of relationships with local language schools and other to drive private tours and events business

- The development and activation of local marketing and PR as appropriate (flyers, local PR etc)

- The day-to-day management of customer service questions and guest recovery

- The delivery of tours. The long term objective of the role will be increasingly it is focussed on the management of the business vs tour delivery, but reality in quieter months will mean important to be flexible and have the capability to deliver tours as well.

- Flexibility - linked to above, while Norwich has year round tourism, peak tourism periods coincide with School Holidays (Feb and October half term) and the period from Easter to early September. During these periods focus is likely to be on tour and team delivery. Outside ideally I am hoping to find someone that can use downtimes from peaks to be seeking new growth opportunitities.

Experience

- an individual with a background in the tourism market and/or entertainment and drama

- potentially either early in their careers, keen to be part of an entrepreneurial venture and have the opportunity of growing a business, and potentially a stake within it

- or potentially at the stage of winding down career slightly but wanting a role that will be interesting, fun, rewarding, and flexible

- with some experience of managing a team, ideally a flexible workforce and understanding the need to ensure fairness and deal with day to day team challenge

- located in central Norwich close to where tours will be delivered. Experience from Cambridge shows this is key - both for the business in flexibility, and for the individuals in terms of work/life balance and per hour when not commuting significantly.

My linkedin - linkedin.com/in/hughwwood

Company website - https://terribletours.co.uk/

Additional benefits - tips received from tours, 10 for each named 5review on Trip Advisor/Google reviews
Job Types: Part-time, Permanent

Pay: 700.00-950.00 per month

Expected hours: 8 - 12 per week

Additional pay:

Tips
Benefits:

Work from home
Schedule:

Weekend availability
Work Location: Remote

Reference ID: General Manager - Terrible Tours of Norwich
Expected start date: 01/08/2025