Director Of Operations

Director of Operations – APAC

Sydney

About the Business

Urban Rest is a high-growth flexible living operator and technology platform disrupting the

serviced apartment and corporate housing space across APAC and Europe. The business focus

is on owning the distribution layer for the contracted travel market into living assets, while

delivering a consistent brand and guest journey through technology. Urban Rest also offers

physical asset operation services that enable branded accommodation assets such as hotels to

be managed with greater efficiency and distributed to contracted clients such as enterprise,

government, insurance and SME clients.

We provide the digital infrastructure and services that connect institutional living-sector assets

and the contracted travel market at scale.

Our mission is to make flexible living seamless.

Director of Operations – APAC

Role Description

The Director of Operations – APAC is responsible for delivering a consistent, high-quality guest experience across Urban Rest’s APAC portfolio, overseeing operational standards, SOPs, teams, systems, guest satisfaction and cost efficiency. The role also leads maintenance governance, preventative maintenance and property quality assurance, partnering with the Director, Technical Services & Onboarding to ensure seamless asset handovers and ongoing property standards. Reporting to the Regional General Manager – APAC, the role sits on the APAC Senior Leadership Team and leads Operations Managers and Field Staff across the region, ensuring operational excellence, quality compliance and scalability as the portfolio grows.

Key Responsibilities:

Guest Experience Strategy & Service Delivery (30%):

● Define and own the APAC guest experience strategy – localising the Global GX

playbook into market-specific execution models that reflect the guest profile, property

mix, and operational reality of each city.

● Establish and continuously evolve the service standards, SOPs, and guest

communication frameworks that govern how Urban Rest’s operational teams interact

with guests across every touchpoint – pre-arrival, in-stay, and post-departure.

● Lead the APAC guest satisfaction programme – owning NPS tracking, review

monitoring, guest feedback analysis, and the translation of that data into targeted

operational improvements.

● Work closely with the Global Guest Relations function to maintain service and

communication standards – with a particular focus on proactive guest experience, early

issue identification, and service recovery that retains the relationship.

● Partner with the Director, Technical Services & Onboarding to ensure that new

properties entering the live portfolio are operationally ready – with all housekeeping,

maintenance, and guest experience systems in place from day one.

● Act as the senior escalation point for complex guest issues across APAC – resolving

with urgency, professionalism, and a bias toward relationship preservation.

Maintenance, Asset Performance & Quality Assurance (25%):

● Own the APAC preventative maintenance programme – ensuring all scheduled works

are planned, resourced, and completed on time across every property in the portfolio,

minimising reactive maintenance events and extending the working life of physical

assets.

● Govern reactive maintenance across the APAC portfolio – with clear response time

standards, contractor management protocols, and escalation pathways that prioritise

the guest experience without creating cost inefficiency.

● Own the APAC quality assurance programme – including scheduled property

inspections, apartment audits, housekeeping standard assessments, and post-stay

condition tracking – with clear scoring, reporting, and remediation processes that are

consistently applied.

● Develop and maintain asset replacement plans for all major FF&E and building fabric

categories – working with the Director, Technical Services & Onboarding on

specification standards and supply chain – ensuring replacements are planned and

budgeted rather than triggered by failure.

● Monitor contractor and maintenance supplier performance across the APAC portfolio –

managing SLAs, KPIs, and cost outcomes with rigour, and escalating or replacing

underperforming relationships without delay.

● Analyse maintenance cost data, QA audit outcomes, and asset condition trends to

identify portfolio-level patterns – and use that intelligence to drive continuous

improvement in how the team manages physical property standards.

● Collaborate closely with the Director, Technical Services & Onboarding on the boundary

between in-life maintenance (Operations) and capital works, refurbishments, and

technical interventions (Technical Services) – ensuring clear ownership, clean handoffs,

and no gaps in accountability.

Team Leadership & People Development (20%):

● Lead, coach, and develop Operations Managers and Field Staff across the APAC region

– setting clear performance expectations, running regular structured feedback sessions,

and building a high-performance operational culture.

● Drive recruitment, onboarding, and performance management across the operational

team – in partnership with HR and the Regional GM – APAC – ensuring the team grows

in quality as the portfolio grows in scale.

● Build a coaching-first culture within Operations – one where team members understand

the why behind every standard, take genuine pride in the guest experience, and feel

equipped and empowered to resolve issues without always escalating.

● Plan and manage operational team resourcing in alignment with portfolio growth,

seasonal demand patterns, and the city-by-city property mix – ensuring coverage is

never the reason the guest experience fails.

● Identify and develop the next generation of operational leadership within the APAC

team – building succession depth and ensuring Urban Rest is not dependent on any

single individual in a critical operational market.

● Lead by example – this is a hands-on leadership role. You are present in the markets,

visible to the team, and willing to roll up your sleeves when the situation demands it.

Operational Efficiency & Cost Management (15%):

• Own the APAC operational cost base – including COGS per occupied room night,

housekeeping cost per unit, maintenance spend, and GX team cost per unit under

management – with clear benchmarks, tracking cadence, and a continuous

improvement bias.

• Identify and deliver operational efficiency initiatives – streamlining workflows, reducing

manual processes, improving scheduling, and building operationally scalable team

structures that grow with the portfolio without growing costs proportionally.

• Lead the rollout and continuous improvement of Salesforce Field Service and other

operational technology platforms across the APAC region – ensuring the team is using

technology to work smarter, not just harder.

• Manage the APAC operational budget – tracking expenditure against plan, escalating

variances with context and resolution proposals, and maintaining financial discipline

across all operational spend categories.

• Build and maintain operational reporting frameworks – covering NPS, QC pass rates,

maintenance response times, cost benchmarks, and team productivity – that give the

Regional GM – APAC and SLT a clear, current view of operational performance.

Cross-Functional Partnership & Stakeholder Engagement (10%):

• Work in close, structured partnership with the Director, Technical Services &

Onboarding – aligning on new property handover standards, maintenance vs capital

works boundaries, FF&E specifications, and the feedback loop between in-life

operational experience and future asset decisions.

• Partner with Revenue Management to communicate operational constraints – planned

maintenance windows, housekeeping capacity limits, and property condition issues –

with sufficient lead time to protect revenue outcomes.

• Collaborate with Sales and Account Management to ensure that client-facing

commitments on service standards, response times, and property condition are

grounded in what Operations can consistently deliver.

• Build and maintain relationships with key property partners, building managers, and

strata contacts – ensuring Urban Rest’s operational obligations under lease and HMA

agreements are met, and building-level issues are resolved with professionalism.

• Contribute actively as a member of the APAC Senior Leadership Team – bringing an

operational and guest experience perspective to commercial, strategic, and people

discussions across the broader leadership agenda.

Key Attributes:

● A seasoned operational leader with 6+ years of experience in multi-site hospitality,

serviced apartments, or property operations – proven track record across multiple cities

or markets.

● Guest-obsessed and standards-driven – you take the physical and service quality of

every property personally, and you build teams that feel the same way.

● A confident maintenance and asset condition leader – you understand preventative

maintenance programme design, contractor management, and the QA disciplines that

keep a portfolio at standard.

● Financially disciplined – comfortable managing an operational cost base, reading a P&L,

understanding COGS and margin dynamics, and making efficiency decisions without

compromising guest experience.

● A natural people leader – you build high-performing, engaged operational teams

through coaching, presence, and a culture of accountability that people want to be part

of.

● Technology-fluent – you leverage operational systems (Salesforce Field Service or

equivalent) to drive team efficiency and give leadership real-time visibility into

performance.

● A skilled cross-functional partner – you work effectively with Revenue, Sales, Technical

Services, and Real Estate, and you understand that operational decisions rarely exist in

isolation.

● Willing and able to travel across APAC markets – the portfolio is multi-city and effective

operational leadership requires genuine on-the-ground presence.