Sustainable Tourism Coordinator

Awamaki is seeking an adventurous, hardworking, flexible person to support and facilitate volunteer and sustainable tourism experiences in the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Our ideal candidate can work fluidly alongside indigenous artisan women and visitors to facilitate respectful and empowering exchanges. We hope for someone who is personable, friendly, and enjoys working with tourists, students and volunteers directly for much of their day. This person must also be able to spend day trips or multi-day trips in remote Andean indigenous communities supporting artisan women as they host tourist and service groups. Calm, creative problem-solving skills are a must, as anything can come up!

This position will work alongside the Sustainable Tourism Manager and will also have some administrative responsibilities.

About Awamaki

Awamaki is a non-profit social enterprise that partners with Quechua women to preserve traditional crafts through skills-based education and connection to market access through sustainable tourism and ethically-sourced crafts. Awamaki is located in Ollantaytambo, a small town in the heart of the Sacred Valley, in Cusco, Peru. Ollantaytambo is one of the most beautiful places you will ever live or visit.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Facilitate tours and support artisans in providing tourism services

• Facilitate day and overnight tours in artisan communities, including translation (when necessary) and coordination of weaving demonstrations, supporting homestays, assisting with weaving lessons and accompanying hikes with local guides.
• Work directly with indigenous artisans to help them improve the tour experiences they offer. Identify areas of need for capacity-building and collaborate with team to plan and implement
• Maintain cultural sensitivity and anti-colonialist language and perspective throughout tourism program

Carry out logistics of tourism

• Appropriately handle challenging situations such as passengers becoming ill on tours; provide customer service for tourists in the case of special requests or challenging circumstances
• Record artisan payment information to ensure correct and prompt payments to artisans for tourism services
• Record and keep documentation of how much each artisan cooperative earns from tourism, both from Awamaki and from tourists
• Coordinate tour logistics such as bookings, transportation, and payments
• Respond to reservations inquiries as needed

Support sustainable tourism program

• Support tourism volunteers as they learn to lead tours
• Assist Sustainable Tourism Manager as needed in managing agency relationships, updating tour and service group trip costs, improving tour offerings, developing itineraries, and arranging logistics for itineraries

Other

• All Awamaki staff and volunteers work one shift per week in Awamaki’s fair trade store in Ollantaytambo

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

An ideal candidate for this position would possess the following qualities:

• Calm, creative problem-solver
• Enjoys interaction with people as a large part of your workday
• Respectful and anti-colonialist perspective on tourism to indigenous communities; ability to facilitate tours in a way that lets artisans lead
• Previous experience in the tourism sector
• Be knowledgeable about Latin American cultures, especially in Peru
• Have experience traveling abroad, especially within the region
• Ability to work some evenings, overnights and weekends (with some weekdays off in recompense)
• Physical ability to spend long amounts of time at very high altitude, hike over uneven terrain, work light construction on service project sites, and carry reasonable loads.
• Bilingual Spanish-English required; Quechua a plus.
• Ability to work legally in Peru (DNI or carnet) strongly preferred

Paid training provided on site.