Travel Marketing Specialist

Job Description

Job Description

Read this first

This is not a specialist role at a big agency. It's the marketing function of a small, distinctive, growing luxury travel agency — and we're looking for one person to own it.

If your ambition is to sit inside a large marketing team and produce content against someone else's strategy, this isn't the right role. If you've been doing that for a few years and are ready to own a brand, set direction, and build something that reflects your judgment as much as your execution, keep reading.

We're honest about the trade: the salary is at the top of the specialist range, not the manager range, because we're a small business paying for what we can actually support today. What you get in exchange is scope you couldn't get at this stage of your career anywhere else — ownership of a real brand, direct partnership with a founder who trusts marketing judgment, and a clear path to Head of Marketing as the business grows.

About Katie Bean Travels

We are a luxury travel agency based in Winter Park, Florida, planning highly personalized travel for affluent and high-net-worth clients. We are Virtuoso-affiliated, a Four Seasons Preferred Partner, Rosewood Elite, and a Belmond Bellini Club member. Our clients don't come to us to book hotels — they come to us because planning great travel is real work, and doing it well requires expertise, judgment, relationships, and someone who genuinely cares about their trip.

Our marketing reflects the same standard. We publish thoughtful destination pages that read like they were written by someone who's been there, because they were. We're building a brand that lives in the growing space between conventional luxury marketing (beautiful imagery, empty words) and the emerging AI-driven discovery landscape where clients increasingly find advisors through search and chat interfaces rather than glossy print.

We are past the earliest stage. We have a defined voice, published editorial content, real client results, and an unusually good foundation for a small agency. Next, we need someone to own the marketing function and grow it.

What you'll actually own.

Brand and editorial.

Our destination pages, blog content, and long-form work are the backbone of how new clients find us. You will own that content pipeline — planning what we publish, working with Katie and our travel advisors to capture their firsthand knowledge, editing for our voice, and building the calendar. You will not be writing every word yourself, but you will be the person who ensures every word is worthy of the brand.

Growth.

Website traffic, email list growth, inquiry volume, and conversion to consultation are the metrics that matter. You will own them — measuring, testing, reporting, and improving. You will bring recommendations, not just dashboards.

Social and email.

Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and email are our primary owned channels. You will plan, produce, and measure across all of them. This includes hands-on content creation — you should be comfortable with Canva, comfortable writing captions in someone else's voice, and comfortable with the platforms themselves. This isn't a role where you can delegate the production work; you'll do most of it. But how it's done and what runs is your call within our brand standards.

Discovery and search.

SEO matters. GEO — how AI systems like ChatGPT and Perplexity find and cite content — matters more, and is where the biggest opportunity is. We're already doing meaningful work here and are ahead of most agencies in our category. You will help push that forward.

Operations.

The marketing calendar, content workflow, brand assets, and quality control across everything we publish. This is unglamorous but foundational. Nothing that goes out with the KBT name should have a typo, a broken link, or a hotel name spelled wrong.

Judgment.

Everything above is table stakes. What actually matters is that you can tell the difference between what's on-brand and what isn't, what our clients care about and what they don't, and what deserves our time and what doesn't. Not every trend, hotel, or content idea belongs on our channels. We need someone who can say no as thoughtfully as they can say yes.

What growth in this role looks like

We're being explicit about this because it's the reason to take the job.

Year one.

You own execution across all channels, learn the brand deeply, build relationships with our advisors, and get our marketing operations running smoothly. Success is measured by whether our content is unmistakably KBT and whether the metrics that matter are moving in the right direction.

Year two.

You own strategy. You decide what KBT's marketing should focus on, what to test, and where to invest. Katie stays close as editorial partner and brand voice, but marketing direction is yours.

Year three and beyond.

As the business grows, you either become Head of Marketing with a specialist or coordinator under you, or you continue owning marketing end-to-end at manager-plus scope. Compensation grows with scope. This trajectory is real; we're not saying it to fill space.

Who thrives here

You've been in marketing for at least three years, and you're good at it. You've done the work — captions, email builds, content calendars, campaign management, analytics reviews — and you know what good execution looks like because you've done it under pressure at a real organization. Whether you did this at a hospitality brand, a boutique agency, an in-house team, or a luxury retailer matters less than whether you can point to work you're proud of.

You want more scope than you currently have. You are tired of executing against strategy set by people two levels above you who don't understand your channels as well as you do. You want to set the direction, and you're willing to trade some current compensation for the chance to do that.

You are a self-starter. This is not a phrase — we mean it operationally. Katie will onboard you, define what matters, and stay engaged as an editorial partner. She will not stand over your shoulder telling you what to post on Tuesday. If that's what you need, this role will not work for either of us.

You have judgment about luxury. Not because you've worked in luxury before (helpful but not required), but because you understand that luxury marketing is a discipline of restraint. You know the difference between “beautiful” and “on-brand.” You know that our clients see through generic aspirational content instantly. You are as comfortable saying “this isn't right for us” as you are saying “let's ship it.”

You are curious about AI and use it well. This is not optional. Our marketing operates in a landscape where clients discover us through AI-driven search as much as traditional Google, and we use AI tools throughout our workflow. You should be actively curious about ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and the tooling landscape — not as a novelty but as a working practitioner. If you're skeptical about AI in marketing, this isn't the right fit.

You care about detail. Broken links, misspelled hotel names, wrong dates, off-brand imagery — you notice these things, and you fix them. Not because you were told to, but because they bother you.

What we offer beyond salary

• Ownership of the marketing function of a growing, distinctive brand

• Direct partnership with a founder who values marketing judgment and won't second-guess yours once trust is established

• A clear path to Head of Marketing as KBT grows

• Real editorial and strategic scope from day one — no year of “proving yourself” before being trusted with real decisions

• A small team where your work matters, is visible, and moves the business

• Winter Park office, walking distance from Park Avenue

• Flexible hybrid arrangement after onboarding

• Access to travel industry networks (Virtuoso, brand partner programs) that most marketers never see

• Travel benefits (industry familiarization rates, occasional trip participation as the role and marketing needs justify)

What we do not offer

• A big team to lean on

• A big budget to spend

• Corporate marketing structure or process

• A slow ramp — you'll be executing in month one

How to apply

Send us three things:

1. A short note (not a cover letter — a real note) about why this specific role interests you and what you'd want to own first.

2. Three to five examples of marketing work you're proud of, with a sentence on each explaining what you did and what happened.

3. Your resume.

We read every application.

We prefer applications that show judgment over applications that show polish. A thoughtful note with three good work examples will beat a beautifully designed application every time.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team where the best person for