Strategic CIO — Hospitality transformation & growth (Australia)

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Hospitality & Travel on a senior CIO leadership mandate anchored in Australia. The remit explicitly spans Canada, Middle East, Singapore.

This is a strategic transformation mandate at CXO level — equal parts operating leadership, change orchestration, and investor / board narrative ownership.

The client values executives who build repeatable operating mechanisms, not heroic firefighting that resets every quarter.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: Sustainable tourism leadership — as 'responsible travel' becomes a differentiator, finding CSO and sustainability leaders in hospitality who can reduce environmental impact credibly
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Australia with explicit corridor responsibility across Canada, Middle East, Singapore.
• Organisation stage: Recent leadership turnover created ambiguity on priorities; you will need to re-establish a crisp enterprise storyline.
• Stakeholders: Key interfaces include headquarters strategy, regional risk and legal, local regulators (where material), and anchor channel partners.
• Secondary lens: Technology leadership for hospitality — finding leaders who understand both the guest experience of hospitality and the product development of technology is exceptionally rare

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Identity & access: Clean up excessive privileges and stale accounts — foundational for both security and audit.
2. End-user support: Reduce ticket backlog through root-cause fixes, not perpetual firefighting.
3. Asset lifecycle: Refresh hardware and end-of-life software on a predictable cadence.
4. Business continuity: Tabletop exercises that surface real gaps in dependencies and communications.
5. Innovation intake: Lightweight process for business-led experiments that don’t bypass architecture guardrails.
6. Vendor concentration: Mitigate single-supplier risk for critical platforms.

Responsibilities (representative)

• Improve IT demand management and portfolio governance with the executive committee.
• Upgrade vendor management — SLAs, penalties, and outcome-based contracts.
• Sponsor integration discipline post-M&A for systems and data.
• Build IT financial transparency — chargeback or showback where helpful.
• Develop IT leadership team with mix of supplier management and internal delivery strength.

Leadership profile

• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Service leadership: IT organisation trusted for reliability, cost transparency, and partnership.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Australia with regular engagement across Canada, Middle East.

Team & culture

Silos are real. Your job is to design forums and incentives so product, technology, risk, and commercial leaders solve problems together instead of optimising local KPIs.

Success measures (examples)

• Value creation: EBITDA / cash trajectory vs. owner or board case — especially under stress scenarios.
• Execution: On-time delivery of named transformation milestones; reduction in repeat incidents or audit findings.
• Leadership: External hires and internal promotions that stick; reduction in key-person concentration.
• Innovation: Launched offers or capabilities that move the needle on differentiation, not pilots that stall.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Map cash, covenant, and customer concentration risks before announcing initiatives.
• Days 30–60: Align owners and board on a 12-month value story — financial and non-financial.
• Days 60–90: Launch two quick operational fixes that build credibility with frontline managers.
• Deep-dive on talent — who is load-bearing, who is blocking, where external hire is mandatory.
• Socialise a simple KPI tree so every function sees how their metrics roll up.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: Executive committee, functional peers, shared services leads, and programme PMOs.
• External: Key suppliers, technology partners, and joint-venture boards where applicable.
• Board / owners: Expect deep dives on risk, liquidity, talent, and transformation — slides light, substance heavy.

Travel & mobility

Multi-hub rhythm — plan for weekly or bi-weekly cross-border travel during integration or transformation peaks.

Compensation

Package aligned to CIO benchmarks in Hospitality & Travel — typically fixed, variable, benefits, and mobility where applicable. Structure detailed at shortlist.

Application status

This mandate is no longer accepting new applications. The search progressed through Q4 2025 and closed for submissions in February 2026. We retain this posting for transparency on the type of leadership work we carry in Hospitality & Travel and Australia. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: hospitality-travel · CIO · Australia · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors