Visitor Services Manager

Overview

Posted Friday 20 February 2026 at 01:00 | Expires Monday 9 March 2026 at 00:59

About the Trust

We’re one of the UK’s biggest charities and we care for 2,000 miles of canals, rivers, docks and reservoirs because we believe life is better by water. We’re looking for people who support our cause and want to make a difference for future generations. Along with our waterways we also manage museums, archives and the country’s third largest collection of historic buildings, as well as the nature and wildlife that calls our canals home.

All of this enables us to provide wellbeing opportunities for millions of people each year.

Join Our Team:
Visitor Services Manager, National Waterways Museum Gloucester

We’re excited to welcome a new Visitor Services Manager at our Wales & South West location.

Navigate your future and lock in your career as we keep our canals open and alive.

This role follows a 37 hours, over a 7 day working pattern. This is a site-based role, requiring occasional travel to meetings with partners, other attractions and to our main hubs for collaborative meetings and team activities.

The purpose of the post is to manage and lead the day-to-day operations, business development and visitor experience at the National Waterways Museum, Gloucester. The Visitor Services Manager (VSM) will lead the site team at Gloucester (colleagues and volunteers) on a day to day basis to focus on the visitor offer, striving for excellence in experience, achieving financial sustainability around income generation and charitable giving and delivering a consistently high-class visitor welcome across the board.

This includes managing a range of front of house functions including food and beverage, retail, events and commercial boat trips. The VSM plays a central role in overseeing, coordinating and championing the experience of every visitor from site presentation, to large/small scale events and programming, making the site a must-see attraction, acclaimed internationally, nationally and loved locally.

As a key member of the Destinations and Attractions Management Team the VSM will work strategically with colleagues in other attractions and with other teams within the Trust to promote, drive and deliver excellence in customer service and a visitor centred approach. The VSM will work collaboratively with teams and volunteers to ensure focused visitor activity which will help build our audiences and increase visitor footfall whilst building engagement for the Trust brand.

A key accountability of the role is managing and reporting on financial performance, delivering on KPI’s and leading and motivating teams to deliver income targets whilst effectively managing costs.

The Visitor Services Manager will manage a range of stakeholder relationships including representing the Trust at local partnership groups, and representing the site at relevant external meetings as appropriate.

• Deliver on financial KPI’s working to control costs and maximise income (commercial and charitable giving) including managing diverse budgets relating to the Front of House operations
• Monitoring and delivering other appropriate KPIs set in the Business Plan, reporting back to the management team on progress and actions
• Overseeing the recruitment of permanent and seasonal staff and volunteers and ensuring they are trained to carry out their duties efficiently and effectively
• Own the visitor experience and ensure colleagues and volunteers work as a team to deliver an unforgettable, quality visit whether in the café/shop or at events
• Lead on volunteer growth, building the volunteering team to deliver key operational functions
• Maintain an overview of the presentation of the site at all times
• Lead on gathering visitor data and analysing customer feedback to ensure necessary actions are taken to improve performance
• Play a key role in all projects that have an impact upon our visitors and the public

You will have extensive experience of working operationally in a customer-focused environment, ideally in a visitor attraction, delivering financial targets and creating dynamic and innovative projects and…