Connectivity Specialist – Hotel Distribution (Channel Managers & Switches)

The job in brief:

Job Title - Connectivity Specialist – Hotel Distribution (Channel Managers & Switches)

Team - you will join Global Hotel, lastminute.com group's hotel sourcing and distribution division, managing direct contracts with 23,000+ hotel properties worldwide. We operate sophisticated B2C distribution through the group's consumer brands and are expanding our B2B capabilities through strategic partnerships and technology platforms.

Level - Professional

Location – Europe

What your impact will be:

• Act as the technical and commercial bridge between Global Hotel and the channel managers, switches and connectivity providers that power our hotel distribution.
• Act as the subject-matter expert on channel manager and switch connectivity: ARI distribution (availability, rates, inventory), booking delivery, content and mapping, and rate/availability push and pull.
• Engage directly and technically with channel managers, switches and aggregators (e.g. SiteMinder, D-EDGE, Cloudbeds, RateGain, DerbySoft, Availpro) to understand their capabilities, limitations and roadmaps, and benchmark them against each other and against our distribution requirements.
• Read and interpret partner API documentation and integration specifications to assess fit against our needs.
• Identify technical gaps and limitations in current connections that affect content quality, availability, competitiveness, conversion or operational efficiency.
• Diagnose recurring connectivity issues and pinpoint root cause on the partner or protocol side.
• Translate technical findings into simple, credible business cases to justify upgrading, replacing or onboarding channel managers and switches, quantifying expected impact on coverage, competitiveness, error reduction and operational savings, with data and analytics colleagues.
• Support commercial and partnership conversations that require technical depth.
• Partner with Product and Engineering during discovery and integration work, coordinating between external partners and internal teams across Europe and Asia.

Your expertise:

• 4+ years working hands-on with hotel connectivity (channel managers, switches, connectivity/aggregation platforms) on the OTA, bedbank, channel manager or hotel-tech side.
• Deep practical understanding of ARI flows, booking delivery, content mapping and connectivity protocols (XML/JSON, push/pull).
• AI knowledge.
• Comfortable in technical conversations with connectivity partners: reading API documentation, understanding integration constraints and diagnosing connectivity issues, without needing to be a software engineer.
• Commercial awareness: able to see the business impact of a technical gap and frame it in a clear, simple business case.
• Strong communication skills to bridge technical and commercial stakeholders.

Desirable:

• Detailed familiarity with the channel manager and switch landscape and its key players.
• Basic SQL and data literacy to support impact analysis.
• Exposure to GDS, OTA integrations or property management systems.
• Additional European languages.

Perks of working with us :

How we work together:

• An inclusive, friendly, and international environment (you’ll be working with colleagues from +10 countries and over 48 nationalities)
• A shorter working week (36 hours full-time), with a half working day on Fridays in applicable locations.
• Flexible start and end of the working day with core hours from 10:00 to 4:00 pm
• Possibility to work from anywhere for a period of time per year defined according to local regulations

How we learn together :

• Fri-Yays: half a day on Friday morning with a no-meeting mandate and dedicated to deep work, personal growth, learning and training and/or focus time.
• Professional and managerial skills development training paths, access to e-learning platforms such as O’reilly, Udemy, Coursera (depending on the department), and to our internal platform offering bespoke training content

Other perks :

• 2 paid days off per year for volunteering purposes
• Occasional social events to foster connections among colleagues
• Travel industry discounts and flash exclusive staff fares
• We support our employees through life's significant moments with leave options (e.g parental responsibilities, marriages, bereavements, relocations, etc.) in line with local laws.

Wish you were here? We do, too!

Selection process steps* :

• HR interview (30 minutes)
• 1st interview (Manager): soft skills + technical knowledge
• Test step online or offline
• 2nd interview (Manager + team member): Test review
• Offer extended

(*Please note the process can slightly vary. The recruiter in charge will share more details when setting up the interview)

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