Position Summary / Job Purpose:
This role provides expert-level management of costs related to Crew Acquisition Movement, owning end-to-end cost allocation, validation, and dispute resolution with vendors and crew members. It serves as the subject matter expert on crew movement expenses, policy interpretation, and system-driven cost processing, driving accuracy, efficiency, and controls across brands.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Own the end-to-end review and validation of invoices from 200+ active vendors and crew expenses across all levels, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
- Lead the timely and precise processing of vendor invoices and crew reimbursements; troubleshoot complex discrepancies and provide guidance to junior staff.
- Analyze and validate costs for crew movement (hotel, transportation, meals, visa, medical, air, etc.) and ensure correct invoicing in all RCG systems; identify opportunities for cost savings and process improvements.
- Ensure all costs are allocated to the proper General Ledger accounts; maintain accurate GL mapping and reconciliation.
- Proactively communicate with vendors on complex invoice rejections to drive timely resolutions; manage exception handling and root-cause analysis.
- Collaborate with ships fleetwide to mitigate expense issues, implement controls, and drive continuous improvement; escalate risks as needed.
- Lead invoicing for Talent Acquisition, Crew Medical, and RCM teams; drive problem resolution and process optimization initiatives.
- Oversee governance of team inboxes and email workflows (including personal RCG email accounts and shared inboxes) to ensure timely, professional responses and escalation as required.
- Maintain current knowledge of SQM policies and related material; translate policy changes into practical procedures and provide training to teammates as needed.
- Demonstrate advanced collaboration across functions to manage high-volume workloads, processing approximately 80K invoices per year and roughly 157K crew expenses per year for a total of over $100M annually, with a focus on accuracy and efficiency.
- Support 24/7 global operations as needed, with flexibility to lead or participate in shifts to meet business requirements.
- This Specialist role may include additional duties as assigned by management; a continuous improvement mindset is expected.
Note: This position emphasizes specialist-level ownership, analytics, and leadership in the crew movement cost lifecycle, rather than a purely coordinating function.
Education, Experience, Knowledge & Skills:
- Bachelor's degree in business or Hotel Management field preferred.
- Minimum of 2 years in the Travel or Cruise Line Industry preferred.
- Accounting background is a plus.
- Proficient in Microsoft Excel.
- Detail oriented.
- Is comfortable with multitasking.
- Able to work well under pressure.
