Americas Regional Travel Manager

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Visa Global Sourcing 
Global Sourcing is part of the Finance organization and manages Visa’s end-to-end sourcing and sourcing of goods and services. Travel services is part of Global Sourcing.

Sourcing is responsible for partnering with business owners relevant to assigned categories such as Travel and Meetings & Events (M&E) plus others to lead all strategic sourcing activities globally to ensure optimal selection of suppliers that deliver best value in price and quality, while minimizing risk to Visa.

 Overview:

This role will lead our Travel operations for Americas’ travel for Visa employees, candidate and customers, relocation etc. The ideal candidate is someone that has a deep domain expertise in travel and who is strong in developing strong internal cross functional relationships and vendor relationships externally. This person will lead projects with Americas regional focus for our travel services. In addition, this person will need to be able to work in a fast-paced environment and embrace the culture and how it applies to Travel services. This role will report into the Director of Global Travel Operations.

Essential Functions:

This mid-level role within Visa’s Global Sourcing organization  involves building relationships with  key regional internal stakeholders across all levels of the organization  -  including executives, executive admins, and internal organizations such as Visa Mobility, Controllership, HR and Security. The Americas Regional Travel Manager will be responsible for working with the Visa-designated travel agency and on-line booking tool providers. Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

 Strategic Partnerships

Trusted advisor to all travelers by providing informed and insightful recommendations which provide the absolute best traveler experience in each situation while adhering to Visa’s travel policies.

Provide support to travelers and regional stakeholders to demonstrate improved savings and traveler experience by increased adoption of online booking and other policies

Partner and nurture the relationship with our designated travel agency vendor. This includes devising workflows and seeking operational excellence to suit the travel needs of stakeholders.

Partner with global sourcing partner for global air, hotel and ground transportation providers and add local and regional nuances and input in order to better support the region.

Apply subject matter expertise to suggest regional and global ideas for policy and process improvements with stakeholders like security, controllership etc.

Socialize travel updates and announcements on internal platforms and promote program benefits to various groups such as EAs

Partner closely with EU/CEMEA & APAC travel managers to ensure alignment on global process with regional and local nuances to the programs

Work closely with the regional and country stakeholders to ensure consistency in the travel experience, while considering the need for local requirements

Projects And Operational

Perform root cause analysis when problems arise to develop permanent corrective actions.

Administer & respond in a timely manner to inquiries via travel services mailbox, AskTravel etc

Manage the unused ticket report, supplier credits and another supplier incentives to maximize value and minimize expirations.

Develop a deep understanding and become a subject matter expert for our travel tools and have an understanding of expense tooling in relation to travel to support the travel program

Stay informed about industry trends and benchmarked best practices to drive innovation and improvement in travel management.

Monitor and ensure compliance with travel policy and procedures

Ensure timely and accurate travel booking and travel agency communications

Assist with office openings and or M&A onboarding - develop a workflow that can quickly and effectively support the new travelers (profiles, forms of payments, etc.) as well as the new travel pattern it creates.

Support travel requirements of the Visa Aviation (corporate jet) team

Qualities We’re Looking For

Excellent written and verbal communic