Job Description

Alongside our core brand, we have a premium, design-led brand with roots in the UK market that we acquired two years ago. It grew deliberately — one carefully selected property at a time — which is why the concept is solid and the identity is clear. We now want to grow it on a European scale, and that means building what was never needed before: the processes, standards, and commercial frameworks that allow a brand to expand without losing what makes it good.

The Senior Manager, Premium Brand Growth owns that growth — the signed deal pipeline, the market sequencing, and the commercial frameworks that make European expansion possible. This is not a brand management or coordination role; it is a growth ownership role with full accountability for building the pipeline and ensuring every property that gets signed meets the brand’s commercial and quality standards. Because new properties outside the UK will realistically take two to three years from signing to opening, success in this role is measured upstream: the volume and quality of signed deals, underwritten topline revenue, rent coverage ratios, and margin contributions — not live P&L performance.

To get there, you will work with our internal departments to make sure the brand’s standards travel as it scales, drawing on the existing UK properties as the live reference model. You will also build the framework required to create external relationships and deal pipeline that give it European reach. The property criteria, the operational standards, the landlord proposition — these are the tools that make the growth possible.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

1. Deal Pipeline & Commercial Performance

• Own the growth targets for the premium brand — signed properties, pipeline, market expansion — and be accountable for hitting them
• Define, track, and report on the deal-level metrics that measure the brand’s pipeline health — signed underwritten topline, minimum rent coverage ratios, and projected margin contributions per deal; bring clear recommendations to C-Level when targets are at risk
• Work with Finance and the Growth Strategy Manager to define and maintain the underwriting framework for the brand — rent coverage thresholds, margin contribution floors, and deal investment criteria — and refine assumptions as signed deals provide real data
• Define and own the property criteria and opening playbook: the practical framework that determines what qualifies for the premium brand and how it opens consistently across markets
• Ensure the brand stays genuinely differentiated from the core offer as both brands grow

2. Internal Ownership

• Partner with the Real Estate team to qualify opportunities against brand criteria — being the brand voice before a deal is signed
• Coordinate with the Growth Strategy Manager on pipeline targets and market economics, and with the Senior Manager M&A on opportunities that could expand the brand’s footprint
• Treat the existing UK properties as the live reference model: work with the teams running them to extract what makes the concept work operationally, and codify those learnings into standards and criteria that can travel to new European markets
• Work with the GMs to define what premium operations require: service model, staffing expectations, quality standards — and where these differ from the core brand; ensure these standards are documented and ready to be deployed ahead of the first European openings
• Proactively drive internal teams — Finance, Legal, Operations, Brand, and Tech — to have the foundational prerequisites in place ahead of pipeline demand: underwriting terms defined, brand agreements templated, operational standards documented, and opening playbooks current. Growth should not be slowed by internal unreadiness.
• Be the single internal point of accountability for the brand’s trajectory and report on it regularly to C-Level

3. External Ownership

• Own the commercial proposition for landlords and property owners: why partner with the premium brand, what the model looks like, how it compares to other premium operators in the market
• Build and manage the brand’s European property pipeline — identifying markets, qualifying opportunities, supporting negotiations
• Define the market sequencing: which cities to prioritise first and why
• Build relationships with property owners, developers, and asset managers in target markets and represent the brand credibly in early conversations

ABOUT YOU:

• 5–9 years of professional experience — understanding what makes a concept work, what makes it scale, and what makes it break when it tries to do both at the same time
• Experience in building or growing a premium brand from the inside: defining what it stands for, translating that into operational standards and property criteria, and pushing a cross-functional organisation to execute consistently against them. You have installed a structure where none existed and made it stick without bureaucracy.
• Enough commercial fluency to be the authoritative brand voice in deal conversations — not to negotiate the lease, but to look at a property and say with conviction whether it fits the brand and why. The Real Estate team closes deals; you are the quality filter that ensures they close the right ones.
• Commercially fluent at deal level: you understand unit economics, ADR positioning, rent coverage, and what drives the underwritten performance of a premium hospitality asset. You build your own investment cases and interrogate the assumptions behind them — not just read outputs someone else produced. You do not need to manage a live P&L, but you need to know what a well-structured deal looks like and carry the conviction to push back on one that does not.
• A track record of driving outcomes through teams you do not manage — influencing Real Estate, Operations, Finance, and Brand without hierarchy, and creating accountability where it would otherwise diffuse.
• Excellent written and verbal English (required); German or other major European languages are a significant plus.
• Clear and confident across audiences: you can present brand strategy to a C-Level team and walk a regional operations manager through quality standards in the same day — without losing precision in either direction.
• Writes clearly and concisely — whether that is a property criteria document, a market prioritisation memo, or a C-Level performance update.
• Proficient in Excel/Google Sheets and PowerPoint/Google Slides; familiarity with data, AI and BI tools is a plus.