Visitor Services Manager

Job Description

Organisation: The National Trust for Scotland

Location: Hill of Tarvit, Cupar, Fife, KY15 5PB

JOB PURPOSE Hill of Tarvit contains an Edwardian mansion and estate, located near Cupar in Fife. The property includes a beautifully preserved house designed by Sir Robert Lorimer, extensive formal gardens, woodland walks and the unique Kingarrock Hickory Golf Course.

This is an exciting and dynamic leadership role that offers the opportunity to enhance the visitors experience – bringing the 1920s to life – whilst developing Kingarrock’s unique historic golf offer. The role combines heritage, innovation and visitor engagement, giving you the chance to create memorable experiences.

You will be responsible for the onsite operations of Hill of Tarvit & Kingarrock Hickory Golf Course. Delivering performance standards and targets to ensure enjoyment of the property by visitors and members is maximised and key commercial, events, financial and development objectives are achieved to make the property sustainable. You will lead a management team responsible for delivering an overall visitor service strategy and caring for the site.

This is a complex role. With a strong background in operational management, you will be required to juggle staff management, property maintenance and health and safety alongside providing innovative ways for visitors to engage with the site. Leading visitor engagement on a site with many distinct visitor types will be challenging – you need to engage with but not alienate current visitors whilst increasing both visitation and dwell time in each area as well as increasing secondary spend.

You will encapsulate the Trust’s values of brave, caring, curious, inclusive and vibrant and enable good communication across the site to ensure a joined up service provision.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES Leadership – whole estate vision

• Lead the vision to turn the estate into an immersive Edwardian experience – from golf attire to tearoom aesthetic.
• Responsibility for opening and closing and security of buildings and collections, emergency procedure implementation, duty management and providing relief cover as required.
• Collaborate with an experienced team of gardeners and be supported by a Fife collections care team.
• Manage the golf assistants, catering visitor services assistants and visitor services supervisors; take responsibility for recruitment, induction, rota management, staff and volunteer development, and performance management so they are fully equipped and motivated to undertake their duties.
• Recruit, retain and reward the volunteer team, an essential part of the property workforce.
• Create a culture of “exceeding visitor expectations” to ensure high standards of delivery and a consistently warm welcome within the visitor experiences at all properties, recognising the differing visitor journeys for holiday makers, mansion visitors, event attendees and golf players.
• Collaborate with other leads in the Fife cluster to make Fife a visitor destination and increase dwell times for the benefit of all sites.
• Develop and manage food & beverage income from grab and go to planned function catering and bring to life the tearoom concept.

Audience & stakeholder development

• Increase visitor numbers at Tarvit through marketing, events, partnerships and working with stakeholders including representing Kingarrock at marketing and networking events and conferences.
• Upsell membership and events using face to face and other means of interaction such as social media.
• Develop and implement strategies to enhance public engagement and access to the natural heritage across the sites.
• Increase audience reach through events, interpretation and community engagement initiatives.
• Use expertise to influence and develop internal and external policy statements and positions.
• Absorb visitor feedback from ASVA, TripAdvisor and local surveys and put improvements in place.
• Work with the community engagement manager on a community engagement plan for the site.
• Look after tenants, holiday cottage visitors and wedding guests.
• Develop golf partnerships for both international visitors and corporate events, including the R&A and the Old Course, St Andrew’s.
• Develop and manage new travel trade and hospitality experiences with the central team.
• Collaborate with the local access forum on core paths and links with nearby villages.

Nature

• Work with the head of natural heritage, the gardens & designed landscape manager & head gardener to manage the site for nature conservation, including exploring becoming a site of special scientific interest.
• Lead the development and implementation of appropriate management frameworks – e.g. a woodland management plan.
• Manage and oversee surveys of wildlife and habitats and feed this knowledge into management decisions, marketing of natural heritage and further development of our voice.
• Organise and implement all ecological monitoring with work feeding into national and international monitoring schemes.
• Maintain and manage habitats and wildlife with the aim of protecting species and increasing biodiversity.
• Provide information to visitors to encourage more visitors and help people get more out of their visit.

Health & Safety

• Take ownership of the safe operation of the mansion house – including fire risk management to protect holiday makers and tenants and security of the site’s collections.
• Plan and deliver regular compliance checks and evidence these as required.
• Be responsible for out of hours calls from holiday guests as well as fire & intruder alarms.
• Work alongside the operations manager and health & safety advisor to ensure visitor safety across all sites through risk assessments, proactive maintenance and emergency response planning.
• Oversee the upkeep of paths, signage, gardens and visitor facilities, ensuring high quality visitor experiences.
• Work with the estates surveyor to uphold repairing standard, agricultural landlord responsibilities and licences to occupy.
• Create management tools for maintaining estate infrastructure (e.g. paths, gates, signs, vegetation management) to achieve ecological, visitor services and safety outcomes.
• Train staff to ensure understanding and responsibility for health & safety on site.

Living the Trust’s Values

• Brave – Be willing to take innovative and bold approaches to conservation and engagement.
• Caring – Show dedication to the protection of Scotland’s natural and cultural heritage – including our sporting history – and to the communities engaging with it.
• Curious – Seek new opportunities to enhance visitor experiences and learn about emerging conservation practices.
• Inclusive – Foster an open and welcoming environment for all visitors, stakeholders, and team members.
• Vibrant – Bring energy and enthusiasm to the role, ensuring that the sites remain dynamic and inspiring places to visit.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE Skills, Experience & Knowledge – Essential

• Direct experience of managing multi strand visitor/commercial services in a hospitality, retail, catering, heritage or tourist attraction context.
• Experience in Catering & Hospitality.
• Management of volunteers.
• Understanding of Sports – hickory golf course.
• Experience of working and communicating with complex and multiple stakeholders.
• The ability to remain calm in challenging and unexpected situations.
• Possess excellent communication skills (written and oral).
• Computer literacy with excellent ability of MS software.
• Excellent leadership and influencing skills.
• Excellent understanding of report writing and financial management.
• Well developed time management and organisation skills.
• Experience in using social media to promote the site, its experiences and events.
• Being able to demonstrate our values: caring, inclusive, brave, curious & vibrant.

Qualifications – Essential

• NVQ3/BTEC/City & Guilds/HND/Degree or equivalent experience.
• Ability to work ‘hands on’ – including in the kitchen/retail and admissions areas – alongside the team members, demonstrating the customer service skills required of all staff.
• Experience in a retail and sales environment.
• Hold a valid and recognised SQA Licensing Qualification e.g. Scottish Personal License Holder’s Certificate and Personal License.
• Intermediate Food Hygiene Certificate or above.
• Current driving licence.

Qualifications – Desired

• IoSH managing safely.

This role is one for which the duties, responsibilities or accountabilities of the role require you to undertake a criminal records check, specifically a Basic Disclosure.

DIMENSIONS AND SCOPE OF JOB Scale – Mansion house – grade A listed mansion house, containing the Sharp’s collection, Fife textile store, two residential tenancies and a holiday let. Holiday lets – in the wider estate there are three standalone 4 cottages with exceptional occupancy rates. Residential – Scotstarvit cottage sits in the wider estate. Functions – from elopements to marquee weddings to funerals, there are multiple opportunities to hire the mansion and estate by external parties. Travel Trade – working with Welcome to Fife and the Fife Chamber of Commerce, the Fife properties are enjoying an upturn in destination tourism. Events – A vibrant events programme is in development . click apply for full job details