Director – Hotel Partnerships & Commercial

1. ROLE PURPOSE

• To open the GCC hospitality market for Finkraft — building and holding relationships at commercial, finance and ownership level across hotel groups, converting those relationships into pilots and paying customers, and bringing the market's real objections back into the business.

1. ABOUT FINKRAFT

• Finkraft is a fintech SaaS company building a Finance Operating System for Travel & Hospitality. We help enterprises and ecosystem players manage invoicing, indirect taxes (GST/VAT), commissions, reconciliation and payments through deep, domain-led platforms.
• In India, Finkraft supports 1,200+ enterprises on GST automation, including HCL, Cleartrip, Philips, Volkswagen, Cipla, BCG, Tata Communications and JSW.
• In the Middle East, we are building the next layer of that infrastructure around UAE e-invoicing (DCTCE / Corner-5), PEPPOL interoperability, payments and a hospitality-specific understanding of how hotels, TMCs and corporates actually bill each other.
• The timing is not incidental. The UAE's voluntary pilot phase opened in July 2026; the mandate reaches large VAT-registered businesses on 1 January 2027 and the remaining VAT-registered population on 1 July 2027. Every hotel, TMC and corporate in this market has to solve invoicing properly within the next twelve months. We are building for that deadline, founder-led and on the ground in Dubai.

1. ROLE CONTEXT

• You know the GCC hospitality market from the inside — the groups, the commercial directors, the owners, the RFP season, and how a hotel really decides. We are building the compliance and billing infrastructure that this industry is about to need, and we need someone the industry already trusts to open those doors and stay in the room.
• This is not a rooms-selling role and it is not a rate-negotiation role. You will carry a commercial number for a product, not a property.

1. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own Finkraft's commercial entry into GCC hospitality: target list, sequencing, first meetings and pilot conversion.
• Open and hold relationships at Commercial Director, Director of Finance, Cluster GM and owner level across hotel groups and management companies.
• Translate a compliance and billing platform into a commercial argument a hotel actually cares about — leakage, disputes, days-to-cash, audit exposure.
• Run pilots commercially end to end: scope, expectations, escalation and conversion to a paid relationship.
• Bring the market back into the building — what hotels object to, what they will not pay for, who is already selling them something similar.
• Build the commercial playbook that the next three hires will run.

1. CANDIDATE PROFILE

Essential

• 8–15 years in hotel commercial roles — Director of Sales, Cluster Director of Sales & Marketing, Commercial Director or Corporate / MICE segment head.
• Demonstrated ownership of corporate negotiated rate programmes and RFP season, including consortia processes.
• Current, active relationships with hotel commercial and finance leadership, corporate travel buyers or TMCs in the GCC.
• A track record of carrying and delivering a commercial target, which you can quantify and evidence.
• Working understanding of hotel commission, bill-back and settlement mechanics — enough to hold a credible conversation with a financial controller.
• Fluent written and spoken English; UAE driving licence.
• Desirable
• Experience selling a product, service or platform rather than room nights — including any technology, distribution or consortia sales.
• Commercial experience at a hospitality technology or distribution company.
• TMC or corporate travel procurement background.
• Arabic language capability.
• Experience as a first commercial hire or in a market-entry team.
• Preferred industry background
• Indicative of where we expect to find this experience. Capability evidenced elsewhere is equally welcome.
• Cluster / Area / Complex commercial roles at Marriott, Accor, Hilton, IHG, Radisson, Rotana, Jumeirah, Emaar Hospitality, Millennium, Kerzner.
• Hotel management companies and owner-operator groups across the UAE and wider GCC.
• Commercial teams at hospitality technology and distribution companies: SiteMinder, Cendyn, Shiji, Amadeus Hospitality, Sabre Hospitality, Duetto, IDeaS, RateGain.
• TMC and travel management commercial leadership: Amex GBT, BCD Travel, CWT, dnata Travel, Seera / Al Tayyar.
• Corporate travel and procurement-side experience is a genuine plus — you will be arguing the corporate's case to the hotel.
• What matters most is not the logo. It is whether you can name the people you would call in week one.