Your mission:Should you decide to accept it...Virgin Hotels Collection is embedding IReckonU (IRU), a hospitality Customer Data Platform, as the core of its guest data ecosystem, unifying and connecting guest information across every system so it becomes a single source of truth. A readiness engagement has already produced a customer data landscape assessment, an analytics baseline and an activation plan; this role exists to convert that diagnosis, and the IRU implementation itself, into a live, governed, value-producing capability, not a platform administration exercise.
The Senior Director of Customer Lifecycle Marketing owns that conversion, moving Virgin Hotels Collection from an early-stage data estate to a trusted, governed and activated guest data capability, and turning that foundation into measurable gains in retention, direct revenue, share of wallet, guest recognition and personalization. This is a value-realization leadership role with first-year delivery expectations, leading a small specialist team while influencing the wider activation ecosystem of loyalty, digital, paid media and guest-service teams.
The Nitty-Gritty:What exactly you will be doing...Guest Data Foundation & Identity:- Own the IRU implementation roadmap jointly with IRU and IT/data engineering, covering PMS, POS, booking engine, loyalty, CRM, marketing automation, paid media and reporting integrations.
- Lead data mapping, Match & Merge configuration, the golden record definition, data-quality thresholds, monitoring and customer data issue management.
- Own the guest identity framework across loyalty, authentication, CRM, booking, mobile and on-property systems, including profile matching, account linking, preference management and guest recognition.
- Define decision rights for match confidence, survivorship, suppression and exception handling when data is not safe to activate.
Governance & Segmentation:- Stand up governance: consent, retention policies, access control and GDPR alignment across connected systems.
- Define the segmentation framework (RFM+, behavioral, event-based, lifecycle and value-based) and own the prioritized use-case backlog.
- Launch the first revenue-relevant use cases and drive adoption of reporting, insight and guest profile usage by loyalty, revenue management, property teams, reservations, guest services, analytics and central marketing.
Lifecycle Activation & Experimentation:- Translate segments into lifecycle activation through the downstream stack, partnering closely with the owners of marketing automation, loyalty and paid media.
- Run a test-and-learn program across Next Best Offer, churn intervention and lifecycle journeys, measured through incrementality and holdouts wherever possible.
- Evaluate and operationalize predictive and AI-driven capabilities, including propensity modeling, churn prediction, next-best-action recommendations and personalization, as the customer data foundation matures.
Guest Journey & Commercial Growth:- Extend unified first-party audiences to paid media (for example Meta and Google) for suppression, lookalikes and smarter targeting, improving acquisition efficiency over time.
- Identify and prioritize high-value guest journeys across acquisition, booking, pre-arrival, on-property, post-stay and re-engagement, translating data capabilities into measurable guest experience and commercial outcomes.
- Partner with brand, loyalty, commercial, revenue management, property and guest-service teams to support distinct brand, guest segment and journey needs while maintaining a unified guest view.
- Manage the IRU commercial relationship, roadmap influence, service levels and vendor accountability, ensuring the capability is not dependent on a single tool or vendor.
Leadership & Mindset:- Thrive doing foundational work in Year 1 without disengaging, while holding the Year-2 commercial endgame in view.
- Treat data quality and adoption as your own problem, not the vendor's or IT's.
- Define crisp success metrics rather than hiding behind a vague onboarding mandate.
- Translate technical data issues into business decisions for Marketing and customer value for IT, making progress even with imperfect data.
- Lead a small specialist team of two to three, spanning CRM/lifecycle, data & analytics, and loyalty or campaign operations.
What qualities are we looking for?You've got skills? If you can perform the following, then you have come to the right place...- Priority integrations live against an agreed sequence.
- Golden guest profile defined and populated, with duplicate profile rate reduced to an agreed threshold.
- Guest identity decision rights documented, including match confidence, merge rules, survivorship, suppression and exception handling.
- Data-quality score baselined and under active monitoring with stakeholder alerting.
- Governance live: consent, retention, access control, GDPR alignment and appropriate use of customer data.
- Segmentation framework and value roadmap defined, with two to three revenue-relevant use cases launched and measured.
- Reporting and guest-profile insight in active use by loyalty, revenue management, analytics, guest services and pilot properties.
- Real lifecycle journeys live across acquisition, booking, pre-arrival, on-property, post-stay, loyalty, reactivation and paid media, driving incrementality, retention, share of wallet, direct bookings, ancillary revenue and LTV.
Background must-have:- Current, legal and unrestricted ability to work in the United States.
- 10-12+ years in CRM, lifecycle marketing, customer data or marketing technology, including at least 3-5 years in a role that owned a CDP, data-unification, or guest/customer identity build end to end is a must have.
- Background in hospitality, travel, or another multi-property, high-frequency, loyalty-driven consumer business, with exposure to operational data (PMS/POS-type) and multi-property identity resolution is strongly preferred.
- Salesforce or similar CRM, CDP, customer data, loyalty or activation experience is essential; direct IRU experience is a plus.
- Demonstrable revenue outcomes from data (retention, lifetime value, upsell), not campaign-volume metrics.
- Proven track record of co-delivering integrations across the marketing and IT boundary.
- Experience with Data governance and privacy fluency (GDPR and consent), given UK and EU operations.
- Hybrid commercial and technical fluency: deep enough to challenge a data model, interrogate Match & Merge logic and sequence integrations, and commercial enough to turn a segment into a profit-and-loss hypothesis and an incrementality test.
