«Creativity and Innovation Brought Vipservice and Me Together»

Few people know that Maria's career began at school, as a teacher of Russian and literature. Today, she leads a large department of more than 40 people and runs a promising project – HotelStar. She is a true role model. She draws inspiration from her work at Vipservice. In the interview, we asked Maria about her career path, combining art and innovations.

Maria, how did you transition from teaching to top management and travel business?

– When I worked as a teacher, I was also the homeroom teacher. Managing a group of teenagers is a great experience for a leader to practice a creative approach to this function. This is when I learned to draw power and inspiration from my own job. I believe this experience served as a solid foundation for my future as a manager.

And of course, I love traveling. I don't treat my hobbies lightly – I always dig deeper, to learn more about the content and organization of a vacation. I started working on routes in the Moscow Region for my friends and myself. And I was pretty good in it because my other hobby, history, helped me enrich my programs. As a result, it wasn't just your typical boring guided tour, but an innovation at the time – a weekend adventure. I know that some of our routes are still popular and used by Moscow travel agencies.

My professional path wasn't all trouble-free and romantic, but it sure was creative. I think that you can solve any complex problem if you think creatively. I started in incoming – establishing relations with hotel managers, transfer companies, then I organized a large economic forum at the Intourist hotel. After that, I worked for a while with suppliers at the City Center of Tourism. Now, with so much experience and knowledge, I am with Vipservice.

How was your start at Vipservice? What was your first success?

– I joined Vipservice in September 2017, as a Director of Procurements.
 I had only one subordinate – the operator of document flow.
 Still, I had ambitious goals set for myself. I had to take contracts with all land suppliers from all subdivisions of the holding under my supervision. We did a lot of internal work: it wasn't easy for the staff to switch to a new system of interaction with suppliers. Because even the most efficient systems are hard to adopt at first.

By 2018, we signed our first contracts and the entire holding could appreciate benefits of this optimization. Subdivisions got a more convenient system of delayed payments, better terms and conditions of cooperation with suppliers, more profit in the hotel area.

On top of it, last years we launched our own Vipservice call center. Today it's headquarters is in our office in Krasnodar. It takes the load off our internal customer support resources and accounting assistance to legal entities of the holding related to land suppliers.

Do you feel the spirit of creativity and innovations that brought you into tourism while working with the holding?

– Sure. I believe this is what brought Vipservice and me together. If it wasn't for the urge of development, growth, engaging in complex tasks and technological breakthrough that the Executive Director of the holding Irina Solovieva translates I wouldn't have realized myself as an innovator and achieved what I have.

Today the most important innovative projects at Vipservice is perhaps HotelStar which I undertook
last December and which I am now preparing for launch. This is proprietary innovation of the holding aimed at optimization of all business processes with land suppliers, above all – hotels. This product will allow us to offer diverse and high-quality content to our customers and more opportunities for our partners to promote their services among final consumers of Vipservice.

HotelStar was announced last year. What is the new deadline and what has changed?

– Just like any other major project, HotelStar required a lot of work and attention. We put a lot of effort into it and we believe it will make an impact on the market. Since last year, the number of contracts
with the most popular hotels among our clients has increased by four times. The number of tools that make the work of external and internal users simple has grown, too. Stay tuned for more details. In-house presentation and launch of HotelStar will take place on July 3.