About The Role
The Vice President, Attractions & Destination Experience Operations is accountable for end-to-end operational performance across attractions, rides, aquatic operations, entry and arrival experiences, central zones, and shared services.
The role sets operational strategy and standards across safety, guest flow, staffing, show readiness, incident response, and service quality. You will be responsible for key operational outcomes including safety, uptime, throughput, guest satisfaction, and cost efficiency, while ensuring facilities and attractions remain compliant, reliable, and guest-ready.
Key Responsibilities
Operations Strategy & Governance
- Define and execute destination-wide operations strategies aligned with safety, brand, ESG, and financial objectives.
- Establish and maintain operating standards, procedures, audits, and governance frameworks.
- Own annual operating plans and longer-term OPEX and CAPEX planning.
Attractions, Rides & Aquatic Operations
- Oversee daily operations across all attractions and zones, ensuring availability, quality, and recovery performance.
- Drive throughput improvements through queue design, dispatch optimisation, and capacity management.
- Lead safety systems covering ride operations, aquatic safety, emergency response, and regulatory compliance.
- Champion incident reporting, investigations, trend analysis, and continuous improvement.
Workforce Planning & Operational Readiness
- Lead centralised scheduling and manpower planning across seasonal and peak demand cycles.
- Implement workforce management systems to optimise productivity and employee wellbeing.
- Build cross-training pipelines and succession coverage for critical operational roles.
- Ensure readiness of operations control centres for real-time monitoring and decision-making.
New Attractions & Refurbishment
- Partner with design, construction, and creative teams to ensure operational requirements are embedded early.
- Oversee operational readiness for new attractions and major refurbishments, including SOPs, staffing models, training, and acceptance testing.
- Manage refurbishment programs to minimise guest disruption while maintaining safety and quality.
Guest Experience & Admissions
- Set standards for guest arrival, ticketing, admissions, and turnstile operations.
- Oversee guest services and guest correspondence with service-level accountability.
- Design and scale premium and VIP experiences, balancing capacity, pricing, and service recovery.
- Work with technology teams to optimise ticketing systems, fraud prevention, and real-time capacity insights.
Park & Destination Environment
- Ensure cleanliness, theming, utilities, and infrastructure support a high-quality, immersive environment.
- Coordinate central zones, routes, events, and seasonal overlays to support smooth guest flow and egress.
- Oversee inspections and quality assurance across all operational areas.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in operations management, hospitality, engineering, business, or a related discipline. Equivalent professional experience will be considered.
- Approximately 15-20 years of experience in large-scale operations environments such as theme parks, attractions, resorts, cruises, stadiums, airports, or comparable high-volume venues.
- At least 5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing complex, guest-facing operations.
- Strong track record in safety-critical operations, including rides, aquatic environments, and emergency response.
- Experience managing large operating budgets and capital programs.
- Proven capability in workforce optimisation, scheduling, and operational analytics.
- Experience leading operational readiness for new assets and major refurbishments.
- Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to operate at executive level.
- Resilient, adaptable, and comfortable managing multiple priorities in fast-paced environments.
