GM - Global Head, Travel & Hospitality

Job Description

Role Overview

The Global Head of Travel & Hospitality owns Wipro's end-to-end travel and hospitality value chain for ~250,000 employees across 65+ countries . The role is accountable for four integrated sub-functions: Travel Operations (delivered through WTSL, Wipro's in-house IATA-accredited 24×7 travel management company operating as a profit centre with its own P&L), Hospitality & Guest House reservations, Airlines & Hotel Contracting & RFP Management, and MICE bookings (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Events).

The mandate is to run Travel & Hospitality as a control-and-value lever: driving measurable cost optimisation through airline and hotel supplier leverage, GDS/PCC fare economics, PLB and segment-income retention, and the structural advantage of the in-house TMC model; enforcing global travel policy, duty-of-care governance and GST-compliant contracting at source; and continuously elevating the traveller experience through self-booking adoption, disruption management and AI-enabled tooling.

Lead the travel-side AI and agentic-AI transformation agenda across the full trip lifecycle, owns travel integration for acquired entities, Expected business impact includes double-digit annual travel cost savings, sustained travel SLAs of 92%+ and hospitality SLAs of 95%+, guest-house utilisation of 80%+, and crisis-response capability of under 30 minutes for Tier-1 travel-risk events.

͏Roles and Responsibilities

1. Functional Responsibilities

• WTSL & Travel Operations — Own strategy, P&L and 24×7 operations of the in-house IATA-accredited TMC (WTSL): airline and hotel commercial negotiation, corporate fare-code and restricted-RBD deal structures, GDS/PCC fare filing and rate loading, PLB and segment-income optimisation, BSP settlement, and ADM/ACM recovery.
• Hotel Contracting & RFP — Own the global hotel RFP programme end-to-end — rate negotiation, Last Room Availability and value-add contracting, zero-markup net-rate delivery, GST-compliant invoicing at source, and contract continuity with no rate gap at renewal.
• Hospitality & Guest Houses — Run guest-house reservation management and hospitality SLA governance globally; own utilisation, cost-per-night and guest-experience metrics; manage the hospitality supplier ecosystem.
• MICE — Own MICE demand end-to-end — group bookings
• Policy & Booking Compliance — Enforce travel policy at the point of booking through the self-booking and pre-trip approval stack (SAP Concur and internal approval platforms); drive self-booking adoption and in-policy booking rates while protecting employee experience.
• AI & Digital Transformation — Lead the travel-lifecycle AI transformation — embedded AI in booking and servicing tools, agentic automation of traveller and approver actions (including disruption management), and predictive intelligence ahead of trip decisions — framed as behaviour, controls and automation, not a systems implementation.
• Duty of Care & Travel Risk — Co-own traveller risk management with Global  Security Team.
• M&A Travel Integration — Own travel integration for acquired entities — booking-platform migration, policy harmonisation, traveller communication and go-live stabilisation — using a repeatable M&A integration playbook.
• Sustainability & ESG — Deliver carbon data coverage across bookings, Scope 3 emissions reporting readiness (CSRD), and sustainability clauses in all travel and hospitality vendor contracts.
• Governance Cadence — Publish the monthly Travel & Hospitality governance scorecard and quarterly programme reporting to senior leadership; maintain auditable SLA tracking through enterprise IT service management.

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2. Stakeholder Management

• Leadership reporting — Report to the Head of Global Operations with a regular review cadence; represent the function to the CHRO organisation with impact-forward reporting on savings, SLAs, transformation and risk posture.
• CFO & Finance partnership — Own the WTSL P&L narrative with Finance — retained-income economics (PLB, segment income, hotel commissions), net operating cost, and the evidence base for the build-versus-buy case for the in-house TMC model, including independent fare audits.
• Cross-functional partnership — Partner with the Global Security Group on duty of care and crisis response; with CIO/BITS on booking-platform integrations; with the payables/FSS organisation on IATA and hotel settlement; and with HR on policy harmonisation and traveller communications.
• External & supplier ecosystem — Own senior relationships with airlines, hotel chains and consortia, the GDS provider, and travel-technology vendors; protect the function's ownership of travel partner management while collaborating constructively with central procurement on negotiations.
• Traveller voice — Champion the traveller experience at leadership level — CSAT/NPS accountability for travel and hospitality touchpoints, executive and VIP desk service standards, and change-management communication for every major rollout.

3. Team Management

• Organisation leadership — Lead a multi-layered global organisation across Travel Operations, Hospitality, MICE and special projects/analytics, operating 24×7 across time zones.
• Succession & capability building — Build succession depth in an operations-heavy team: develop strategic and analytical capability in operational leaders, manage planned retirements and leadership transitions without service disruption, and absorb talent from acquired entities into the operating structure.

• Performance management — Calibrate leadership style per leader — autonomy for strategically strong leads, structured cadence and oversight for execution-focused leads — while keeping accountability unambiguous.
• Engagement & cadence — Run rewards & recognition, leadership offsites and an engagement cadence that keeps a globally distributed, crisis-exposed 24×7 operation motivated and audit-ready.

͏Requirements / Pre-requisites Required for the Role

1. Educational Qualification Required

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Commerce, Hospitality/Travel Management
• MBA or equivalent post-graduate qualification in Business/Operations (strongly preferred).
• Industry credentials valued: IATA-accredited agency operations exposure, GBTA/CCTE certification, ISO 31030 familiarity, GDS (Sabre/Amadeus) proficiency.

2. Work Experience Required

• 18 - 22 years of total experience in Airlines/Travel management Companies with a minimum of 8 years heading a global corporate travel and/or hospitality function for a large multinational (75,000+ employees or $75M+ managed travel spend).
• Demonstrated P&L ownership of a travel operation — ideally an in-house or hybrid TMC — including GDS economics (PCC, fare filing, corporate fare codes/RBDs, PLB, segment income), BSP settlement, and airline/hotel commercial negotiation at named-account level.
• Proven hotel programme leadership: global RFP cycles, LRA and value-add contracting, guest-house or serviced-accommodation operations, and hospitality SLA management.
• Hands-on leadership of enterprise booking-platform estates (SAP Concur or equivalent OBT, pre-trip approval workflows) and MICE/group-travel operations, including platform automation programmes.
• Proven delivery of duty-of-care/travel-risk frameworks with real-time traveller tracking, and of M&A travel integration onto common platforms.
• Track record of quantified outcomes — travel cost reduction of 15%+ on comparable portfolios, SLA performance sustained through geopolitical crisis events, and measurable adoption gains on self-booking.
• Experience in India-headquartered global environments with GST-compliant travel contracting knowledge is a strong advantage.

3. Behavioural Competencies

• Strategic & commercial acumen — Treats travel as a business with retained-income economics, not a cost centre — commercial instinct on fare structures, supplier incentives and the in-house TMC value stack.
• Executive presence — Communicates impact-forward at CEO/CHRO/CXO level; builds the evidence case for the operating model rather than asserting it; makes the team's work visible.
• Data-driven decision-making — Builds decisions on baselines, targets and audited evidence; insists on discovery and ground-truth input before design; resists anecdote-led decision-making.
• Judgement under competing goals — Balances policy enforcement with traveller experience deliberately — knows when soft controls with downstream governance beat hard stops.
• Change & transformation leadership — Leads AI adoption personally; converts operational leaders into AI-literate operators; distinguishes automation opportunity from platform replacement.
• Organisational savvy — Navigates organisational boundaries (procurement, security, finance, IT) with political sensitivity — protecting functional ownership of partner management while remaining collaborative.
• Resilience & crisis command — Calm, decisive crisis command — proven ability to run 24×7 travel operations through geopolitical disruption, system outages and mass rebooking events while holding SLAs.
• Integrity & governance mindset — High integrity in a supplier-facing, incentive-rich domain.

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