Hospitality Assistant Manager | Aspire Lounge Birmingham Airport
Reporting to: General Manager, Aspire Lounge Birmingham Airport
Salary: Competitive
Location: Birmingham Airport
Do you want to be at the forefront of one of the most exciting and fastest growing sectors in Pre-flight Hospitality?
If you have a passion for delivering world class guest experience, have a passion for the Hospitality Industry, enjoy working as part of a Team and enjoy meeting new faces every day, then this is the role for you. Operating since 1987, Aspire Lounges are an award-winning hospitality experience, which has grown to become Europe’s largest brand of Pre Flight Hospitality & second by scale globally. We serve over 6m+ customers worldwide within 100 + lounges & over 18,000 guests per day. Over 1.2m guests are within the UK & Ireland.
We deliver outstanding customer experiences, bringing sophistication to everyday travel, delivering our brand promise of ‘time well spent'.
We are seeking candidates for an exciting opportunity to join a high-flying team of pre-flight hospitality professionals at our Birmingham Airport Lounges and to continually improve the Aspire Lounge offering to meet our ambition of being the Best Lounge provider globally.
Job Summary:
The Hospitality Assistant Manager supports the Hospitality General Manager in leading lounge colleagues to deliver Aspire’s People, Place & Provender hallmarks, embedding the People Pillar attributes of Empathy, Efficiency & Discretion into every touchpoint. The role ensures consistent delivery of the Aspire service standards and operating procedures. This role involves managing a team of hospitality colleagues, both culinary and guest experience disciplined, maintaining the lounge's standards & implementing strategies to improve the guest experience and revenue generation.
This is a hands-on leadership role, responsible for driving service excellence on shift, coaching colleagues in real time, and ensuring the smooth, efficient & consistent delivery of Aspire service standards across the full guest journey.
You will need to be to be Guest obsessed, open minded, a highly intuitive individual with a creative and modern view of hospitality. We are looking for meticulous attention to detail with relaxed characters who are fun and outgoing. An all-round team player with technical expertise.
Responsibilities
Key Responsibilities:
Safety:
- Conduct audits and inspections promoting safe observations and acting on near misses.
- Build a just safety culture upon our safety commitments to minimise Lost Time Incidents.
- Monitor adherence to Safety, Hygiene, training, COSHH and Fire regulations, ensuring all HIRA’s are kept up to date.
- Strive for excellence across all KPI’s & review performance against the Global Lounge Scorecard matrix.
Team Leadership:
- Assist with the recruitment, engagement, and supervision of the best hospitality talent, supporting the management of attrition.
- Schedule colleague shifts, allocate duties, and monitor performance to ensure efficient operation and adherence to service standards.
- Provide coaching & feedback to colleagues to foster a positive work environment & continuous improvement.
- Leading the team of colleagues on shift, ensuring the team consistently applies the three service standard pillars of Empathy, Efficiency and Discretion in dealing with Guests.
- Supporting the embedding of daily behavioural reinforcement through Hospitality Briefs modelling Aspire’s service standards.
- Act as liaison between management & team, conveying directives, providing guidance & addressing concerns.
Brand & Service Excellence:
- Champion Aspire’s People Pillar principles, ensuring all behaviours reflect Empathy, Efficiency and Discretion.
- Ensure the highest level of guest satisfaction by maintaining cleanliness, ambiance, and service standards in the lounge.
- Address guest enquiries, concerns, and complaints promptly and professionally, striving to exceed expectations.
- Oversee delivery of personalised moments such as loyalty recognition and tailored experiences based on recognised segments.
- Ensure team members deliver service according to the Aspire service standards, values, and Operations
- Manual throughout the customer journey (Welcome, Hosting, Service Delivery, Farewell).
- Maintain the brand experience across People, Place and Provender hallmarks – ensuring ambience, flow, presentation, and guest cues are consistently aligned.
- Operational Management: Assist with inventory management, including stock replenishment, ordering supplies, and controlling costs to meet budget targets.
- Help maintain and monitor lounge facilities and equipment, coordinating maintenance and repairs as needed to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for guests and colleagues.
- Support the implementation of new operational policies and procedures to optimise efficiency and compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Ad hoc reasonable requests by senior leadership team.
- Support the maintenance of digital systems readiness (LCS, CRM, PIM) to ensure seamless guest journeys and accurate data capture.
Revenue Generation:
- Identify opportunities to increase revenue aligned with Aspires product tiers, upsell, cross-selling, and promotional activities.
- Analyse financial performance metrics and trends to identify areas for improvement and inform decision-making.
- Provide administrative support with financial and system reconciliations to maintain accurate records and ensure leakage is minimised and billing is maximised.
The list is not exhaustive and is not intended to restrict the scope of the job but clearly define a starting point and may vary depending on location and local customer requirements.
Qualifications
- Effective communication, interpersonal and supervisory skills.
- Proven hands-on experience in a supervisory/manager role within the hospitality industry, preferably in a premium lounge, hotel, upscale restaurant setting or Airline crew.
- Previous Allergens and Level 2 Food Safety qualifications (new training will be provided).
- Ability to multitask, prioritise tasks, and work effectively under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
- Ability to roll your sleeves up and be one of the team interacting with Guests, our partners, and suppliers.
- Proficiency in computer applications and systems, such as Microsoft Office suite.
- Knowledge of industry best practices, service standards, and safety regulations.
- Strong capability in coaching teams to deliver behavioural service standards (not just procedural).
- Ability to travel, as required, within the region to other lounge locations.
Benefits:
- Excellent salary package.
- Full training provided including Safety & Hygiene to deliver role successfully.
- Holiday purchase scheme.
- Free parking whilst on duty
- In-house and external training programmes to further develop skills.
- Complimentary meals and soft drinks when on duty.
- Swissport pension scheme with ability to self-contribute.
- 24-hour employee assistance programme.
- Eye test vouchers.
- Death in service salary contribution.
- Discounted retail within the airport (varies by airport)
- Discounted access to Aspire lounge network for family and friends.
- Recognised Membership of The Institute of Hospitality
