Visitor Experience Manager

Job Overview

Bath Abbey welcomes over 300,000 visitors a year. This role is responsible for delivering day to day visitor operations and ensuring a high\-quality visitor experience. You will contribute to the financial stability of Bath Abbey by maximising income generation through admissions, guided tours and appropriate add on items.

You will create a positive, professional, and productive work environment for your team of staff and volunteers leading by example and supporting their learning and professional development.

Responsibilities

· Ensure all visitors receive an exceptional, warm, and inclusive welcome to Bath Abbey, setting a benchmark for world\-class heritage hospitality.

· Ensure all staff and volunteers in your team have a strong knowledge of the visitor offer and can communicate this effectively to visitors.

· Work with the Facilities Manager to ensure all public areas are presented and maintained to a consistently high standard.

· Work with the Facilities Manager to review, implement, and monitor all aspects of health and safety, first aid, security, risk assessments, and emergency procedures relating to visitor operations.

· Monitor and respond to visitor feedback (including online review sites) in a professional and timely manner and implement action plans when required.

· Ensure all Visitor Experience staff and volunteers are appropriately recruited, inducted, trained, and developed.

· Line manage, coach and develop a team of Visitor Experience Officers, Visitor Experience Assistants, and volunteers. Function as a role model to ensure consistently high levels of customer service and commercial upselling are delivered.

· Set, monitor, and review quality standards for your team and coach them accordingly.

· Ensure appropriate levels of staffing and volunteer resourcing to support the Abbey to operate as a visitor attraction. This includes the production of monthly and daily rotas.

· Lead regular briefings and meetings for visitor experience, retail and operations staff and volunteers keeping the team aligned on daily activities, revenue targets, service standards, and site developments.

· Support the operational delivery of exhibitions.

· Contribute to the development of, and lead when appropriate, visitor focused events.

· Oversee the Abbey’s Tours Programme, delivering tours as required.

· Oversee the end\-to\-end administration, scheduling, and logistics of external group bookings, commercial tour operators, and coach parties. Manage the daily arrival flow of tour groups, ensuring dedicated staffing/volunteer hosting, fast\-track processing, and minimal disruption to individual visitors. Oversee the Abbey’s visitor accessibility strategy, ensuring accessibility barriers are minimised across the historic fabric of the site.

· Oversee the Visitor Experience journey and experience from initial enquiry to follow up post visit.

· Work with external organisations to increase ticket sales.

· Collaborate with the Marketing and Communications Officer to ensure all printed and digital materials for visitors are appropriate for the audience, engaging, accurate, and produced on time.

· Work alongside the Learning Manager to coordinate learning activities, workshops, and education visits on the Abbey floor alongside the general visitor flow.

· Collaborate with the Retail Manager to maximise secondary spend and targeted sales of appropriate retail products at the visitor entrance and online ticketing platform.

· Support the Head of Visitor Experience in the production of operational reports, visitor evaluation, tracking conversion metrics (gift aid, experiences, and packages) and evaluating seasonal data.

· Drive the operation to successfully achieve and exceed the designated visitor experience budget expectations. Committed to optimising admission ticket sales, collaborating creatively with external partners to increase footfall, achieve increased ticket sales. Contribute to the creation, packaging, and operational delivery of value\-added visitor offers to boost average transaction value.

· Lead on the promotion and capture of Gift Aid at all admission and donation points, ensuring the front\-of\-house team is highly trained and motivated to meet conversion targets.

Commitment to Safeguarding: Must demonstrate a strong commitment to safeguarding the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults. (The successful candidate will be required to undergo a DBS check and complete mandatory safeguarding training upon appointment)

Skills

Relevant qualification in history, heritage, hospitality, tourism or similar or able to demonstrate equivalent interest, knowledge, and experience.

An understanding of visitor operations or visitor experience

An understanding of different access requirements and how to meet visitor’s needs.

A flexible, visitor first approach.

Clear and effective written and verbal communication skills.

Ability to manage a busy workload, multitask and prioritise accordingly without compromising on quality.

Ability to work both collaboratively and independently.

Ability to make decisions under pressure without immediate assistance from line manager.

Excellent forward planning skills.

Excellent IT skills.

(Use of Outlook, word, excel, SharePoint, teams)

Understanding of digital ticket systems.

Able to demonstrate extensive experience in visitor operations, visitor experience, or customer service, ideally in a heritage attraction.

Previous experience in line management and leadership experience, with direct reports and including our Visitor Experience Assistant Team, seasonal workers, and volunteers, ideally within a heritage attraction.

Experience of effective department resourcing and reporting for payroll

Cash handling / till reconciliation procedures.

Working with back\-office ticketing and online booking systems.

Dealing with visitor feedback and handling demanding and demanding situations with the public, in a calm and confident manner.

Special requirements

Hours are on a four\-week rotation and include regular weekends and bank holidays and occasional evenings.

The successful candidate will be required to submit to an enhanced DBS clearance check.

The candidate will be required to have a right to work in the UK.

Application

To apply, please send a full CV and covering letter of no more than one A4 page which explains why you are a suitable candidate. Please include the details of two references. References will only be taken up once an offer has been made.

Special Requirements

· Hours are on a rotation and include regular weekends and bank holidays.

· The successful candidate will be required to submit to an enhanced DBS clearance check.

· The candidate will be required to have a right to work in the UK.

Application

To apply, please send a full CV and covering letter of no more than one A4 page which explains why you are a suitable candidate. Please include the details of two references. References will only be taken up once an offer has been made.

Please send your CV and letter to: recruitment@bathabbey.org.

Deadline for applications: Friday 2nd October,2026 at 1\.00pm.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and the vacancy may close before the advertised deadline. We encourage early submissions to avoid disappointment.

Pay: £30,170\.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension


• Cycle to work scheme


• Employee discount


• Enhanced maternity leave


• Transport links

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