Operations & Guest Experience Coordinator - Travel Experiences | Long-Term Growth Opportunity

# Operations & Guest Experience Coordinator — Travel Experiences | Long-Term Growth Opportunity We are looking for a smart, reliable and genuinely caring person to join a fast-growing international travel experiences company. This is not a typical Virtual Assistant role. Initially, you will help us manage day-to-day operations for tours and experiences across different cities, working directly with the founder and our guides. But for the right person, this role can grow significantly. We want someone who may eventually become capable of owning operations, coordinating other team members and helping us build the company internationally. # About the role We currently operate experiences across Italy and Asia, with further international expansion planned. Your job will be to help make sure everything works smoothly behind the scenes while guests are travelling, guides are working and new bookings are arriving. Typical responsibilities will include: * Responding to customer messages * Handling standard cancellations and refunds * Solving booking issues * Coordinating with guides through WhatsApp * Helping schedule guides and departures * Checking upcoming departures and spotting potential problems * Resolving simple operational issues with local partners/vendors * Updating availability when required * Supporting OTA and booking-platform administration * Keeping important information organised and documented * Escalating genuinely important issues when necessary You will not be expected to ask permission for every small decision. As trust develops, we want you to use judgment, solve problems and take responsibility. For example, standard customer problems and reasonable refunds may eventually be handled independently, while exceptional situations or larger financial decisions are escalated. # What we are really looking for Experience is useful. How you think and behave matters more. We are particularly interested in someone who is: * Extremely reliable * Responsive during agreed working/coverage hours * Smart and quick-minded * Calm when something goes wrong * Good at finding solutions instead of only reporting problems * Kind and respectful with customers and colleagues * Organised and precise * Comfortable making decisions * Able to communicate clearly in English * Honest when they make a mistake * Naturally proactive * Interested in travel, cultures and people * Able to work independently without needing constant supervision We especially value people who think: “There is a problem. Let me understand it and find the best solution.” rather than: “There is a problem. I need to wait for someone to tell me what to do.” # What we do NOT want Please do not apply if you regularly: * disappear without communication * respond only when something benefits you * blame other people instead of solving problems * hide mistakes * need to be reminded repeatedly * provide careless work * treat customers or colleagues rudely * require constant supervision Mistakes are completely normal. Carelessness is not. If something goes wrong, our philosophy is simple: Tell us. Fix the customer. Understand what happened. Improve the system so it is less likely to happen again. # Hours, time zones and availability Initially approximately 10–15 hours per week, depending on the person and the final structure of the role. The work is fully remote. Our current operations span several time zones. Most of our European operations are based around Italy and Central European time, while we also operate tours in East Asia, including markets such as Japan, Korea and China. As we grow, our team will increasingly include people covering different parts of the world. This does NOT mean you are expected to work across all these time zones or to be available 24 hours a day. Quite the opposite. We want to build the company so that people in different parts of the world can cover different operational windows, rather than expecting one person to stay connected from morning until night. For this particular position, a time zone approximately 2–5 hours behind Italy can be especially attractive, although it is absolutely not mandatory for an exceptional candidate. There is a practical reason for this. Some of our Italian experiences, particularly our pub crawls, begin around 9:30 PM Italian time. For someone living 2–5 hours behind Italy, that departure happens at approximately 4:30–7:30 PM locally. This can make it possible to provide useful evening operational coverage for Europe without having to work late into the night. Candidates based in suitable time zones across parts of Europe, Africa or South America may therefore find the schedule particularly convenient. But we are open to great people anywhere. What matters is finding working hours that are: * clearly agreed * reliable * sustainable * compatible with your life * useful to the team We believe strongly in flexibility and do not care about controlling where someone is sitting every hour of the day. If your responsibilities are covered and the team can rely on you, we want you to have freedom. However, operational responsibility requires reliability. If you agree to cover certain hours, customers and team members must be able to rely on you during those hours. Over time, our intended coverage structure is approximately: Europe / Italy → core operations Asia → Asian operations and support Americas → future additional coverage The aim is not to make people work more. The aim is to build a global company where work can move across time zones instead of following one person around 24 hours a day. # Compensation Our initial budget is approximately: €350–€600 per month or approximately US$400–$700 per month depending on: * experience * agreed hours * availability * level of responsibility * demonstrated ability For an hourly structure, we are generally considering approximately: US$8–$12 per hour depending on experience and the final scope of the role. We care more about finding the right person and creating a sustainable arrangement than squeezing every candidate into exactly the same hourly rate. This is not intended to remain a low-level role forever. If your responsibility and value to the company grow, your compensation should grow too. There may also be opportunities over time for: * performance bonuses * increased responsibilities * leading other people * managing a region or part of operations * paid learning and professional development * travel connected to our experiences and new launches * helping launch new tours or destinations * potentially more senior compensation structures as the company grows We prefer developing great people internally when possible. # Potential career path The role could evolve approximately like this: Operations & Guest Experience Coordinator → Senior Operations Coordinator → Team Lead → Operations Lead / Regional Operations Manager For the right person, this could become a meaningful long-term position inside an international travel company. As we expand, strong team members may also have opportunities to learn areas such as: * new-market launches * guide recruitment and training * partnerships * experience development * international expansion However, management is not mandatory. Someone who becomes an exceptional specialist and prefers not to manage people should still be able to grow. # How we work We believe in: Freedom + Trust + Growth + Humane Working Conditions in exchange for: Reliability + Ownership + Honesty + Care + Results We do not believe people should be permanently connected to work. We want predictable time off, flexibility, remote work and respect for people's lives outside the company. Parents are parents. Travellers should be able to travel. People need rest. And meetings, training and required team activities are work — and should be treated as such. At the same time, freedom only works when people can trust each other completely. When you are responsible for something, you own it. # A note about AI For these application questions, we want your answers — not AI's answers. Please do not use ChatGPT, Claude or other AI tools to write or substantially improve your responses. Applications that appear to have been generated by AI will not be considered. This is not because we are against AI — we use technology ourselves. It is because this particular stage is designed to understand how you think, make decisions, communicate and solve problems on your own. If we later work together, this will also become clear very quickly during the practical training and trial period. A polished application written by AI does neither you nor us any favour if it does not reflect the person actually doing the job. Simple, imperfect and genuinely yours is much better than artificially perfect. # Application questions Please answer the following personally and concisely. ## 1. Emergency departure A guide messages you 90 minutes before a tour saying they cannot work. Six guests are booked. The founder is unavailable. There are two possible replacement guides, but one would cost the company €20 more. What exactly would you do? ## 2. Customer problem A guest is extremely unhappy and asks for a €70 refund. The situation is not completely black or white. How would you decide what to do? ## 3. Mistake Tell us about a real mistake you made at work. What happened? What did you do immediately afterward? What did you change so it was less likely to happen again? ## 4. Ownership Tell us about a time you solved a problem without being explicitly told how to solve it. What did you notice, and what did you do? ## 5. Your situation Please tell us: * Where are you based? * What time zone are you in? * Which languages do you speak? * How many hours per week can you reliably commit? * What hours are you generally available? * Would being available during part of the Italian afternoon/evening work well with your current time zone and lifestyle? * What hourly/monthly compensation are you looking for? * What other regular work or studies are you currently committed to? * Are you looking for something temporary, or would you be interested in growing with a company for several years? # About us — the heart of the company We are Oxy Rise Group, an Italian travel experiences company built around a very simple idea: people matter. Our experiences were born in the streets — around food, conversations, cultures, travellers and local people. We believe travel should not feel like checking attractions off a list. It should create memories, conversations and genuine human connections. The same philosophy applies inside our company. We don't want to build a business where people are simply numbers on a spreadsheet. We want to build a team of smart, kind, curious people who care about what they do and care about the people around them. People should be able to work hard without work taking over their lives. They should be able to learn. Travel. Raise families. Have interests outside work. Become better at what they do. Earn more when they create more value. And potentially grow into responsibilities they did not imagine having when they first joined us. In return, we expect very high standards of care, honesty, reliability and ownership. We are ambitious. We want to become strong throughout Italy, continue expanding across Asia, and progressively explore other parts of the world. But we do not want to grow by becoming colder. We want to grow without losing the human side that made us start in the first place. If one day you leave Oxy, we would like you to be able to say: “It was easy to enjoy working there. It was fun and motivating. I met great people who loved what they did — and I became better while I was there.” # One last thing Attention to detail matters enormously in this role. If you have genuinely read this entire job post, please finish your application with the words: PEOPLE FIRST Do not explain why you are writing it. Applications that do not include these words at the end will be automatically rejected, regardless of experience. If this sounds like the kind of company you would genuinely like to help build, we'd love to hear from you.