Director of Tour Development & Partnerships
About the Role
Hounds Travel is building the travel platform for people who travel with their dogs, bringing trip planning, compliance support, hotel booking, and curated experiences together in one place. This is a founding leadership role for our tour business. The vision, initial routes, guest experience, and readiness standards are already defined. Your role is to build the operating infrastructure and partner network that bring the program to life, prove the model through pilot routes, and scale what works into a repeatable growth engine.
Key Responsibilities
Tour Development & Operations
- Lead refinement, launch, and ongoing delivery of each tour route, translating program vision into a reliable operating model
- Source, vet, negotiate with, and manage local tour operators, DMCs, ground handlers, accommodations, guides, and other suppliers
- Structure supplier agreements and commissions, and hold partners accountable to quality, service, and cost expectations
- Own end-to-end trip logistics from pre-launch planning and supplier coordination through on-the-ground delivery
- Apply and continuously improve guest- and dog-readiness standards to ensure a consistent Hounds Travel experience across markets
- Build the operational playbook, systems, documentation, and processes required to launch additional routes efficiently
- Identify operational risks and solve problems proactively before and during live trips
- Establish metrics and feedback loops needed to continuously improve the product
Partnerships & Business Development
- Recruit, onboard, and develop travel agency, advisor, referral, and other distribution partnerships
- Build relationships with private and pet-friendly air transport providers to support end-to-end travel for guests and their dogs
- Develop and manage the participant pipeline, setting and achieving booking and revenue targets by route and season
- Structure partnership, referral, and commission agreements with agencies, transportation providers, and strategic partners
- Create repeatable partner onboarding and engagement processes
- Represent Hounds Travel in travel-trade and pet-travel communities to build awareness and credibility
- Identify new partnership opportunities that can materially expand distribution or improve guest experience
What You Will Own
- Route launch readiness and timelines
- Supplier and local operator relationships
- Tour operating standards and guest experience
- Partner acquisition and channel development
- Booking pipeline and route-level growth targets
- Partnership and supplier economics
- Systems and processes that make the business scalable
- Team and organizational structure supporting the tour business as the company scales
Compensation Structure
Full-time, remote role with approximately 30-40% travel to launch markets for site visits, partner meetings, and live trip delivery.
Compensation commensurate with experience, plus performance-based incentives.
Equity participation available for the right candidate who wants to help build the business from the ground up.
Reports directly to the Founder & CEO.
Flexible start date, targeted around preparation for the first route launch.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in travel, tourism, hospitality, destination management, or a closely related field
- Significant experience in tour development, DMC operations, travel operations, or multi-day program delivery
- Proven track record building and managing supplier, vendor, or destination networks
- Experience negotiating and managing commercial agreements, including supplier, referral, commission, or partnership structures
- Demonstrated success developing agency, referral, distribution, or channel partnerships that generated measurable bookings or revenue
- Experience managing complex logistics across multiple vendors, locations, and stakeholders simultaneously
- Demonstrated ability to build process, systems, and operational structure from the ground up
- Strong commercial judgment and ability to balance guest experience, operational quality, and economics
- Comfort working autonomously in an early-stage environment where you are expected to both set strategy and execute
- Ambition and capability to grow from hands-on functional owner into a people and department leader
Nice to Have
- Experience as a founding hire, first functional leader, or early-stage department builder
- Existing relationships across travel-trade, DMC, hospitality, or air-transport ecosystems
- Experience launching new destinations, itineraries, or travel products
- Experience working with premium, experiential, or adventure travel
- Familiarity with or genuine enthusiasm for traveling with dogs
Apply for This Role
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