Sector practice head — Hospitality (Middle East) · CIO

Position overview

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

This is a sector or practice-head mandate combining deep domain credibility with commercial ownership of a vertical P&L or global practice line.

This is a role for someone who has already led through at least one major inflection: restructuring, M&A, regulatory reset, or category shift.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: International brand standard compliance — as Indian hotels operate under global brand flags, aligning operational leaders with international brand standards while managing Indian cost structures
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Middle East with explicit corridor responsibility across Continental Europe, India, Singapore.
• Organisation stage: ESG and conduct expectations from owners and regulators are now hard constraints on how growth is pursued.
• Stakeholders: Owners may include PE operating partners, a promoter family office, or public-market investors — each with different tempo and KPIs.
• Secondary lens: Sustainable tourism leadership — as 'responsible travel' becomes a differentiator, finding CSO and sustainability leaders in hospitality who can reduce environmental impact credibly

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Digital workplace: Improve employee-facing tools, support model, and productivity for hybrid work.
2. Data platforms: Enable self-service analytics within guardrails; reduce ad-hoc extracts and shadow IT.
3. Integration: Tackle spaghetti interfaces between legacy and modern stacks — prioritise by revenue or risk impact.
4. Agile at scale: Where adopted, make delivery model work with compliance and audit — not despite them.
5. Budget transparency: Give business units clear view of run vs. change spend; challenge duplicate demand.
6. Leadership team: Upgrade managers who can run hybrid supplier / internal teams with outcomes, not activity metrics.

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.
• Service leadership: IT organisation trusted for reliability, cost transparency, and partnership.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Middle East with regular engagement across Continental Europe, India.

Team & culture

Inclusion and psychological safety are not separate programmes — they are prerequisites for honest debate on strategy and risk. Model curiosity, direct feedback, and consequences for conduct lapses.

Success measures (examples)

• Financial: Revenue and margin vs. plan; cash conversion; capital efficiency.
• Strategic: Share in priority segments; customer retention in anchor accounts; milestone delivery on transformation.
• People: Engagement trends; regrettable attrition in critical roles; diversity of succession slate.
• Risk: Audit and regulatory outcomes; conduct events; operational resilience metrics.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Shadow key customer journeys or operations — paper over slides where reality diverges.
• Days 30–60: Cut or pause low-value projects freeing capacity for strategic work.
• Days 60–90: Publish first integrated forecast or plan under your ownership — even if directional.
• Build trust with risk, legal, and audit through transparency — surprises erode licence to move fast.
• Pick one cultural signal (e.g. meeting hygiene, promotion criteria) and model it relentlessly.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: Matrix of global product houses and local P&L; tension is normal — your role is to broker trade-offs with data.
• External: Customers who influence reference deals; government or industry bodies in regulated sectors.
• Capital providers: Banks, sponsors, or minority investors — each needs a slightly different narrative on risk.

Travel & mobility

Travel weighted to priority markets and quarterly global or regional forums; flexibility for crisis windows.

Compensation

Competitive CIO compensation for Hospitality & Travel leadership: cash, incentive, benefits, and potential equity or carry (case-dependent). Discussed with finalists only.

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 Middle East. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: hospitality-travel · CIO · Middle East · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors