Hospitality Training Leader - London City Airport

Do you want to be at the forefront of one of the most exciting and fastest growing sectors in Travel & Hospitality?

We are seeking candidates to launch our exclusively curated luxury pre-flight experience in the heart of the city. This is an exciting opportunity to lead and join a high-flying team of hospitality professionals and to continually improve the Airport offering to meet our ambition of being the best Travel & Hospitality provider globally.

If you have a passion for delivering world class guest experience, leading hospitality teams, launching game changing propositions 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, that 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 UKI.

We will offer luxurious, contemporary experiences in a comfortable & exclusive atmosphere, first class personal hospitality & contemporary artisan. With beautifully considered zones for relaxing, refreshing or working, guests time will be well spent. Culinary offering and vibe within the space will evolve to suit the time of day or year, be influenced by London’s social calendar and our guests need state.

Job Summary: 

The Hospitality Training Leader reports jointly to the Lounge General Manager and Senior Regional Training Manager, supporting the entire LCY team by leading the training function from classroom-based theory induction for new hires to upskilling and practical trainings in the live environment. In this role you will be a senior leader, ensuring each team member is exceeding the expectations of our guests by following our training, safe operating & hygiene procedures. Working in partnership with the Regional Training structure, you will ensure all mandatory and regulatory training is compliant and records are fully auditable. Critically you’ll set the tone, leading high standards in hospitality and ensuring the training plans are in place to realise them.

Key Responsibilities:

• Training Delivery & Compliance:

  • Deliver both classroom-based and on-the-job training in line with global, airport and local standards.
  • Lead structured induction programmes for new colleagues, ensuring understanding of brand, service standards and operational procedures.
  • Maintain full training compliance, ensuring all mandatory and recurrent training is completed, recorded and audit ready.
  • Update training systems and databases to accurately reflect compliance and colleague progress.
  • Work in partnership with the Regional Training Team to identify and address training needs
  • Ensure all company standards, policies & procedures are consistently understood & adhered to by the whole team.

  Coaching, Performance & Team Development:

  • Coach, mentor and develop colleagues through regular observation, structured feedback and in-the-moment coaching.
  • Continuously assess colleague capability to ensure they are competent, confident & delivering their role effectively.
  • Lead by example as a role model, demonstrating service behaviours of Empathy, Efficiency and Discretion.
  • Address performance gaps, poor performance and misconduct in a timely and professional manner, supporting improvement.
  • Support leaders and colleagues in building capability, confidence and consistency in service delivery.
  • Foster a culture of continuous improvement, feedback and engagement, building positive and trusting relationships across the team.

  Operational Leadership & Service Excellence:

  • Act as a champion for service excellence, ensuring consistent delivery across the guest journey (Welcome, Hosting, Service Delivery, Farewell) and ensuring the highest standards of health & safety, quality and security are consistently delivered.
  • Take responsibility for ensuring the team delivers a consistent, high-quality guest experience
  • Support awareness and delivery of dietary, allergen and product knowledge standards.
  • Ensure colleagues apply service standards consistently to reduce risk, improve safety and improve guest satisfaction.
  • Communicate and collaborate effectively with colleagues and leadership to support engagement and operational alignment.
  • Take a proactive approach to supporting the operation, stepping in where required to maintain smooth and efficient service.

Essential Skills:

• Proven hospitality experience responsible for teams, shifts or training provision.
• A desire to lead and develop other teams and team members.
• Passionate about hospitality, raising the bar on guest experience and training provision.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and influence others.
• Willingness to undertake iLead and Level 3 training qualification (if not already achieved).
• Can communicate clearly with your people to help them understand the company’s strategy and goals. 
• Ability to build positive and trusting relationships across teams.
• Embrace an ideas culture to enable teams to create an agile edge.
• Fluent spoken and written English.
• Computer literate, including use of Microsoft Office & Learning Management Systems.
• Promote flexibility, adaptability and agility to enable contingency time. 
• Flexible to work on various shifts (days, evening, nights, weekends, and holidays)
• Provide feedback to the team on operational results to ensure service standards are always upheld.

Desirable Skills:

• Experience working in aviation or hospitality, ideally in an operational environment.
• Experience in training, coaching or developing teams in a customer-facing environment.
• Additional languages.

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.

Benefits:

• Excellent salary package.
• Holiday purchase scheme.                        
• Free parking whilst on duty.
• Industry recognised Train The Trainer (TTT) Qualification.
• Industry recognised food safety training and qualifications to FSA L3.
• Industry recognised CPD opportunities with the Aspire Hospitality Academy.
• 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.
• Discounted access to Aspire’s network for family and friends.
• Full wardrobe provided.
• Saturday evenings off

To minimise the impact on local residents LCY operates between the following hours which gives Saturday evenings off.

Weekdays – 04:45 to 22:00

Saturday – 04:45 to 13:00

Sunday – 10.30 to 22:30

Public and Bank Holidays – 09:00-22:30

25^th December – Closed