Salt Lake City Day Tours Manager

Make Salt Lake City Unforgettable

Some people see Salt Lake City as a stop on the way to somewhere else.

You know better.

You see the stories behind the skyline, the history hidden in plain sight, the character of the neighborhoods, the drama of the surrounding landscape—and the enormous opportunity to turn a few hours in Salt Lake into one of the most memorable parts of a guest’s vacation.

Southwest Adventure Tours is looking for someone to own that opportunity.

As our Salt Lake City Day Tours Manager, you will lead the people, vehicles, partnerships, products, and daily decisions behind SWAT’s growing day-tour operation. You will make sure tours leave prepared, guides bring the destination to life, guests return smiling, and the business performs as well financially as it does experientially.

This is part operations leader, part guide developer, part business builder, and part calm-in-the-storm problem solver.

It is not a sit-behind-a-desk-and-forward-emails kind of job.

Your Mission

Build the most dependable, engaging, and commercially successful day-tour operation in Salt Lake City.

That means creating an operation where:

- Guides do more than drive; they connect, entertain, educate, and inspire.
- Tours depart on time with clean vehicles, accurate information, and everything needed for the day.
- Guests feel welcomed, safe, and genuinely glad they chose SWAT.
- Problems are handled quickly, calmly, and professionally.
- Hotels, concierges, tourism partners, and event planners know exactly who to call when their guests want to experience Salt Lake City.
- Bookings grow, costs remain controlled, and the program produces healthy margins.
- “Good enough” never becomes the operating standard.

What You’ll Do

Run the Show

You will oversee the daily execution of Salt Lake City day tours from the first vehicle check to the final guest drop-off.

- Schedule guides, assign vehicles, confirm tour readiness, and adjust quickly when plans change.
- Coordinate multiple tours without losing track of timing, safety, guest needs, or operational details.
- Make confident decisions when a guide calls out, weather changes, a vehicle develops an issue, or a tour needs immediate support.
- Ensure vehicles are clean, properly equipped, professionally presented, and ready to operate.
- Maintain compliance with company policies, safety procedures, DOT requirements, and insurance standards.
- Step into the field and guide a tour when the operation needs you.

Build Guides Guests Remember

A great guide can turn a sightseeing trip into the story guests tell when they get home.

You will:

- Recruit, onboard, train, coach, and evaluate Salt Lake City day-tour guides.
- Teach guides how to deliver a compelling experience—not just recite facts between stops.
- Set clear expectations for professionalism, safety, storytelling, timing, destination knowledge, guest interaction, and vehicle care.
- Conduct ride-alongs and field evaluations.
- Recognize excellent performance and address performance gaps directly.
- Develop a guide team that is knowledgeable, dependable, confident, and proud of the experience it delivers.

Protect the Guest Experience

You will own the quality of the experience, not merely the completion of the itinerary.

- Monitor guest feedback, public reviews, complaints, and service-recovery situations.
- Identify patterns and fix the underlying issue instead of repeatedly treating the symptom.
- Improve routes, timing, stops, interpretive content, guest communication, and tour flow.
- Ensure guests receive a consistent SWAT experience regardless of which guide or vehicle they have.
- Turn mistakes into recoveries—and recoveries into better operating practices.

Grow the Business

This role is not limited to running the tours already on the calendar. We want someone who will help put more tours on it.

- Build productive relationships with hotels, concierges, visitor centers, destination organizations, conference planners, event organizers, travel advisors, and tourism partners.
- Develop opportunities to include SWAT tours in conventions, conferences, group programs, and visitor packages.
- Represent SWAT throughout the Salt Lake City tourism community.
- Collaborate with Sales and Marketing on campaigns, sales materials, tour positioning, promotions, and conversion opportunities.
- Find new audiences, partnerships, distribution channels, and reasons for visitors to book.
- Treat business development as an active responsibility—not something to work on “when things slow down.”

Know the Numbers

A full vehicle does not automatically mean a profitable tour.

You will:

- Monitor bookings, revenue, labor, vehicle use, direct costs, utilization, and margins.
- Understand what each tour costs to operate and what it contributes to the business.
- Identify wasted time, underused resources, scheduling inefficiencies, and avoidable expenses.
- Balance service quality with sound financial judgment.
- Report clearly on performance, challenges, trends, and opportunities.
- Help establish targets and take ownership of reaching them.

Create What Comes Next

Salt Lake City has more stories to tell—and more experiences to sell.

- Improve existing tours based on guest feedback, guide insight, market demand, and operating results.
- Research and develop new tour concepts, routes, themes, stops, and partnerships.
- Evaluate ideas for guest appeal, operational feasibility, competitive value, and profitability.
- Keep SWAT’s Salt Lake City products fresh, relevant, and worth recommending.

You May Be a Great Fit If…

- You have at least three years of leadership experience in tourism, hospitality, outdoor recreation, transportation, field operations, or a similar environment.
- You have managed people, built schedules, coached performance, and held team members accountable.
- You know how to develop relationships and turn conversations into business opportunities.
- You can manage logistics without becoming rattled when the day stops following the plan.
- You have experience coordinating vehicles, drivers, fleets, transportation, or field-based teams.
- You make decisions when decisions are needed.
- You understand that revenue matters, margins matter, labor matters, and details matter.
- You communicate clearly with employees, guests, vendors, partners, and company leadership.
- You are comfortable using scheduling software, CRM platforms, fleet-tracking tools, and Google Workspace.
- You have experience with Samsara or a similar fleet platform—or can learn quickly.
- You can keep several tours, guides, vehicles, guest needs, and deadlines moving at the same time.
- You know Salt Lake City well—or are prepared to become the person everyone asks about it.
- Your schedule is flexible.

What Winning Looks Like

You will know you are succeeding when:

- Tours consistently depart prepared and on time.
- Guides are professional, knowledgeable, engaging, and accountable.
- Guests leave excellent feedback and recommend the experience.
- Problems are resolved quickly and become less frequent over time.
- Vehicles and staff are scheduled intelligently.
- Partners actively refer business to SWAT.
- Bookings, revenue, and margins improve.
- New tour products make it from idea to profitable operation.
- Leadership knows what is working, what is not, and what you are doing about it.
- The Salt Lake City operation runs with energy, discipline, and pride.

This Role Is Not for Everyone

This may not be the right position if you want to manage exclusively from a desk, avoid difficult conversations, wait for perfect information before making decisions, or leave operational problems for someone else to solve.

It may be exactly the right position if you enjoy building teams, improving systems, developing business, solving real-world problems, and creating experiences people remember.

You will have authority, accountability, variety, and the chance to shape an important part of SWAT’s future.

Your office may occasionally have a windshield.

If you are ready to lead from the front, build something meaningful, and show visitors why Salt Lake City deserves more than a quick stop, we want to hear from you.

Requirements

The Practical Requirements

- A valid driver’s license and clean driving record.
- Ability to meet applicable DOT and company insurance requirements.
- CPR and First Aid certification, or willingness to obtain it after hire.
- Ability to lift up to 50 pounds.
- Ability to work in vehicles, outdoors, and in active field conditions.
- Flexibility to work early mornings, evenings, weekends, and occasional holidays during peak periods.
- Willingness to guide tours or provide operational coverage when necessary.

Tourism does not always operate Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 5:00. Neither does this position.

### Benefits
The successful candidate will have the option to participate in the company’s benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements and applicable plan terms.