Product Manager - East Sussex

Product Manager - East Sussex at Experience Education: Brighton

With more than 30 years’ experience, Travelbound are the industry leaders in high quality, subject-led tours for schools, universities, colleges, and clubs. With bespoke itineraries to incredible worldwide destinations, and our exclusive Chateau du Molay in Normandy, Travelbound tailor every tour to meet your specific educational and cultural requirements. Whether it’s a history trip to New York & Washington, introducing Art & Design students to Paris, or organising orchestra and choir performance tours in Italy, every detail will be taken care of to create a truly tailormade, inspiring learning experience.

The role

The Travelbound Product Manager is responsible for the strategy, development and overall performance of the product portfolio. The role owns what Travelbound sells: which destinations, curriculum-linked tours, itineraries, price points, and product evolution.

Working in close partnership with the wider teams, the Product Manager translates curriculum, customer and market insight into a clear, differentiated product range. Close collaboration with other departments ensures it is well bought, priced, sold and delivered.

The Product Manager line manages the small Product Team, with accountability for the team’s output, standards and development. The role reports to the Head of Product on portfolio performance, new product development and key risks and opportunities.

Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities

Product Strategy - Lead Travelbound’s product strategy, defining priority destinations, subjects, and tour types, and evolution of the portfolio over the next 1–3 years. Portfolio Ownership - Own the end-to-end Travelbound product portfolio across worldwide destinations including itineraries, excursions, accommodation specification and pricing. New Product Development - Support the NPDM to identify, design, and launch new tours, destinations, and itineraries aligned to curriculum needs, demand, and market trends, ensuring commercial and operational viability. Curriculum & Customer Insight - Maintain strong insight into the UK curriculum, customer needs, and travel trends, ensuring the product range remains relevant and differentiated. Pricing & Commercial Performance - Set pricing with the Commercial team, monitor margin, conversion, yield, and refine the product mix accordingly. Product Lifecycle Management - Manage the product lifecycle, launching, refining, repositioning, or retiring based on performance, supplier, and customer feedback. Web & Sales Collateral - Own the Travelbound website and sales content, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and strong brand alignment. Cross-Functional Leadership - Partner with key teams to align product strategy with buying, sales, and delivery, including sales training. Health, Safety & Quality - Set and embed safety, quality, and customer experience standards across the portfolio with H&S and Operations. Ensure these are embedded in itinerary design and supplier specification. Competitor & Market Analysis - Track competitor activity to strengthen Travelbound’s product proposition. System & Data Ownership - Maintain accurate product data in the Travelink Reservation System, using insights to drive decisions. Team Leadership - Line manage the Product Development Manager and Product Executive, set clear objectives, coach and support their development. Build a wider product team culture of commercial curiosity, attention to detail and customer focus. Reporting & Stakeholder Management - Report to the Head of Product and wider commercial leadership on performance, pipeline, risks, and opportunities. Flexibility - Work additional hours and travel as needed, including destination visits, supplier meetings, and events. What we are looking for

Proven product management experience in the travel industry, ideally within tour operating, group travel or educational travel. Strong commercial acumen with a track record of building and improving a profitable product portfolio. Demonstrable experience leading new product development from concept through launch to in-market performance review. Strong analytical and numerical skills: comfortable working with sales, margin and supplier data to make decisions. Excellent organisational skills and strong attention to detail, particularly around itineraries, pricing and product specification. Effective people manager, able lead and develop a small product team. Strong communicator, comfortable presenting to and influencing senior stakeholders and external partners. Strong collaboration skills, able to align cross-functional teams behind the product strategy Proficient in Microsoft Office, particilatly Excel and PowerPoint; able to work with reservation/booking systems (e.g. Travelink) and product/sales reporting. Good geographical knowledge and interest in travel; willing to travel to destinations as required. Understanding of the UK education curriculum and the school travel market is desirable. Curious and commercially driven, always seeking improvement A ’can do’ attitude, comfortable working independently, leading a team and collaborating across the wider business. Some of the benefits

Hybrid working pattern between our office and homeworking Annual Bonus scheme Opportunities to travel overseas on familiarisation trips 25 days of annual leave plus public holidays and a bonus day off for your birthday; we also have a tenure based annual leave benefit, up to a maximum of an additional 5 days depending on length of service Global recognition and reward programme Access to extensive online learning resources In-house training opportunities Regular social events Various employee discounts and offers, including discounted trips with our brands Diversity and inclusion

We believe that people are happier and perform best when they are able to be their true selves and that diverse teams deliver better results. We are committed to building an inclusive culture and embracing diversity in all its dimensions. This includes inspiring change through increasing awareness of unconscious bias. Together we will cultivate a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, where everyone can flourish.

Experience Education Student Travel Group

TravelBound is a part of the Experience Education Student Travel Group, a collective of specialist brands dedicated to delivering exceptional and memorable travel experiences for schools and groups.

Our specialist brands include TravelBound, SkiBound, World Challenge, JCA, Edwin Doran and MasterClass, and they operate across 5 unique travel categories: curriculum tours; ski trips; expeditions; UK activity centres and sports tours.