Executive Openings & Transitions EMEA

Position Summary:

The Openings Executive – EMEA drives hotel openings across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, ensuring each property launches with strong operational readiness, brand compliance, owner confidence, and commercial momentum. The role provides disciplined project leadership from pre-opening planning through post-opening stabilization, aligning ownership groups, hotel leadership, corporate functions, and brand teams around clear milestones, risks, and success measures. The ideal candidate is a commercially aware hospitality leader who can translate strategy into execution, resolve complexity with pace, and help deliver exceptional guest and team experiences from day one.
 

Key Responsibilities:

This position centrally manages the openings process across all brands, with accountability for project governance, operational readiness, stakeholder alignment, launch quality, and measurable post-opening performance.

• Lead hotel opening projects from early planning through post-opening stabilization, ensuring clear governance, ownership, and escalation management.
• Develop and maintain detailed opening plans, critical path timelines, milestones, risks, dependencies, and deliverables.
• Coordinate ownership groups, hotel leadership, regional teams, and Hilton brand functions to align decisions, actions, and launch priorities.
• Ensure all hotel departments are prepared to operate effectively at launch, with readiness tracked against agreed pre-opening milestones.
• Support onboarding, training, system adoption, and operating rhythm creation for pre-opening teams.
• Align opening activities with Hilton brand standards, regional strategies, owner expectations, and hotel-level commercial priorities.
• Monitor post-opening performance indicators, including guest experience, operational stabilization, commercial ramp-up, and brand readiness outcomes.
• Provide targeted coaching, issue resolution, and operational support to hotel leadership teams during stabilization.
• Capture lessons learned and convert opening insights into repeatable process improvements that improve efficiency, scalability, and launch quality.

Support Activities:

Contribute to regional KPIs through opening projects, including Hilton Honors enrolments, Stay Experience Score, and commercial ramp-up.

Maintain and enhance support materials, knowledge articles, tools, and processes to reflect the latest brand voice, improve adoption, and drive efficiency, scale, and quality.

Essential Qualifications and Experience:

Bachelor’s degree in Hospitality, Business, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Minimum five years of hotel operations experience, ideally including exposure to pre-opening or transitional environments.

Strong understanding of Hilton brand standards, hotel operating disciplines, and systems.

Excellent communication, organization, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and influencing skills.

Willingness and ability to travel across EMEA to support hotel openings and stakeholder engagement.

Preferred Qualifications and Skills:

Multilingual capability, with English required and additional EMEA languages advantageous.

Project management certification or equivalent experience managing complex, cross-functional delivery plans.

Experience working across both managed and franchised hotel operating models.

How We’ll Help You Thrive

At Hilton, the hospitality we’re known for doesn’t end with our guests. We proudly invest in our Team Members’ wellbeing, supporting you through all of life’s moments. When you join Hilton, our exceptional care extends to you with unmatched perks and benefits, including*:

Incredible travel perks – Enjoy 110 nights of deeply discounted travel, with room rates as low as $40 USD/night at our world-class hotels through our Go Hilton travel program

Paid parental leave – Because family matters. We offer paid leave for eligible Team Members, including partners and adoptive parents

Crisis concierge – In times of loss, our Crisis Concierge offers a single, compassionate point of contact for both practical support and emotional care

Mental health resources – Your wellbeing comes first. Through our Care for All hub, we provide resources to help our Team Members to care for themselves and their loved ones. In many countries, eligible Team Members receive free counseling and support through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

*Benefits availability may vary depending on Team Member’s location as well as terms and conditions of employment and are subject to the terms and conditions of each specific program/plan.