Fractional Director of Operations & Customer Experience · Remote · Two days a week · $9,000 for the quarter
I work with multi-day tour operators, boutique hoteliers, and transportation providers whose growth has outrun their process. Not as a consultant who writes a report. As the operations director you don't have a full-time budget for yet.
Rob Fielding · 25 years in cruise, resort, hotel, and tour operations
In the beginning the founder knows every booking, every supplier, every guest by name. Quality is high because one person is holding the whole picture. Then the company grows. More programs, more suppliers, more staff. The picture gets bigger. It's still living in two or three heads, because nobody has time to write it down.
That's the trap, and it only happens to companies that are working. It also has a shape you can recognize.
A guest question that used to be handled in an hour now takes a day. Nobody is certain whose question it is.
Excellent when your senior person is on. Fine when they're not. Your consistency is a person, and that person takes vacations.
The founder is confirming transfers again. The GM is in the group inbox. Your most expensive hours are doing your cheapest work.
People who genuinely care are leaving anyway. Effort is covering for structure, and effort doesn't renew.
Three or more and I'd stop looking at the people. Someone resigning or having a bad week doesn't cause this. It shows you what was already true.
Twenty-five years in and I keep waiting to find a sixth. Count how many you've seen in your own operation in the last ninety days.
The booking existed. The confirmation loop did not. The guest stands at arrivals watching everyone else leave.
COST: the first hour of the trip, and the tone of every hour after it.
The allergy was in the file. The file was not in the room where dinner was made.
COST: guest safety, an apology dinner, and a review that writes itself.
Two versions of the itinerary in circulation. The guide has the wrong one. Nobody finds out until the bus is moving.
COST: a missed visit, a scrambling driver, and a refund conversation.
One person holds the whole picture. Then that person goes on vacation, resigns, or simply has a bad week.
COST: every decision waits. Response times triple until they return.
Something went wrong. The guest knew. Two days passed before anyone answered, because nobody knew whose job the first move was.
COST: the difference between a loyal client and a public complaint.
Not one of those is a people problem. Each is something a system should have caught, and it didn't.
Two days a week, remote, working inside your operation rather than alongside it. I hold the operations seat: decisions, escalations, supplier conversations, and the building that never gets done because everyone is busy running trips.
Every system gets handed over with the person who will own it after I leave. That handover is the deliverable, not a document.
The form below, about five minutes. I read every one myself and reply within a business week either way.
No pitch. I ask what broke most recently and what it cost you. You'll leave that call with at least one thing worth fixing whether or not we work together.
I sit inside the operation, talk to the people running it, and come back with what's actually breaking and in what order I'd fix it. No charge, and it happens before either of us commits to the quarter. If the answer is that you don't need me, that's what I'll say.
Two days a week for the quarter, with a named owner inside your team for every system we build.
Investment
$9,000 for the three-month engagement.
Three payments of $3,000, one a month. Nothing is due until we start, and the two-week diagnosis happens before either of us commits to the quarter.
That is an introductory rate, and I'll tell you exactly why it exists. This is the first engagement I'm running in this format, and I want the case study more than I want the margin. In exchange I'll ask permission to write up what we fixed and what changed, anonymized if you'd rather. The next engagement is priced differently.
Whether $9,000 is a lot depends on numbers you already have. Work out what one refunded program costs you. Or what a founder's day is worth against a coordinator's, then count how many founder days went into confirming transfers last month. Most operators find the quarter pays for itself on a single failure that doesn't happen. If your arithmetic says otherwise, don't apply. I'd rather you kept the money.
It isn't a software implementation, and I don't sell one. It isn't a reorg, and I won't recommend one in the first month. It isn't a report: I build inside your operation and leave the systems running. And it doesn't come with guaranteed revenue or guest scores. What I can promise is that the work is done in your operation, with your team, on the failures you're actually having.
Cruise, resort, hotel, and tour operations, in the field and in the office. I've run programs where the margin lived or died on whether a driver got the right sheet, and I've cleaned up after the ones where he didn't. Currently operating Inbound Spain, a boutique experiential travel company, which means the systems I'd build for you are systems I run myself.
Right now I'm publishing a thirty-day series on LinkedIn called Too Busy to Be Good: one failure pattern a week, what it costs, and the system that stops it. If you want to see how I think before you talk to me, read that first. It's free and it's the same material.
A consultant analyzes and recommends. I hold the seat. I'm in your systems, on your supplier calls, and accountable for whether the thing we built is still running in month three. The work product is a functioning operation, not a deck.
If you're running multi-day programs and the founder is still confirming transfers, you're the size this is built for. Companies large enough to have a full operations director don't need a fractional one.
Access and one decision-maker who can say yes. I need to talk to the people running trips, see the real documents rather than the tidy ones, and have someone who can approve a change without a committee. That's it.
It isn't, and that's deliberate. Most of what breaks in an operation breaks for structural reasons, and structure is built in focused blocks, not by being permanently available. If your operation genuinely needs someone five days a week, you need a full-time hire and I'll tell you so.
They stay, and they stay with a named owner on your team who has been running them alongside me before I leave. A system that only works while I'm in the building isn't a system.
One engagement at a time, and I won't take a directly competing operator in the same market during or immediately after yours. Ask me about your specific market on the call and I'll be straight with you.
There isn't one, but there is a reason. This is the first engagement I'm running in this format, and a documented result is worth more to me right now than a higher fee. You get the introductory rate, I get a case study I can point at. That trade only works once, so the next engagement won't be priced this way.
Thirty days' notice, either direction, no penalty. The two-week diagnosis exists partly so we both find that out before the quarter starts rather than during it.
Five minutes. I read every application myself and reply within a business week, including the ones I turn down and why.