Job Description:

Business Overview

Rakuten Group's mission is to "Empower people and society through innovation."

Under this corporate philosophy, we are committed to transforming and enriching society by providing highly satisfying services to our users and business partners, and by fostering the growth of many individuals. We offer over 70 diverse services, including Japan's largest online shopping mall "Rakuten Ichiba," the online travel service "Rakuten Travel," and the online booking service for golfers "Rakuten GORA."

Department Overview

Rakuten Travel, a core service within the Rakuten Group, is an online travel service that offers a wide array of travel experiences to domestic and international travelers. Our goal is to 'enrich people's lives through travel.' As one of Japan's largest online travel agencies, we continue to grow, delivering new travel value to customers worldwide.

Within this context, the Marketing Department aims to clearly communicate Rakuten Travel's value to both domestic and international travelers through optimal marketing strategies. By expanding our fan base, our ultimate objective is to make Rakuten Travel a beloved service not only among Japanese travelers but also among travelers across the globe.

Position:

Why We Hire

At Rakuten Travel, we define all information that supports users in finding and booking their ideal hotel as 'content.' We are continuously working to improve the quality and quantity of this content, as well as its effective dissemination. Our content scope is broad, encompassing not only travel articles and social media posts, but also user reviews, articles posted by individual hotels, photographs, geographical information, and much more.

In recent years, the importance of AI has rapidly increased within the online travel agency industry. High-quality content that AI can reference is indispensable for superior AI services. Therefore, we are focusing more than ever on content enrichment, aiming to provide industry-leading services even in the age of AI.

The position we are recruiting for plays a crucial role in driving this initiative. Specifically, your mission will be to maximize the quality and quantity of User Generated Content (UGC), such as user reviews and hotel blog posts, and to effectively leverage this content.

Attraction
- Impact and Innovation at Scale

Work on one of Japan's largest and most influential travel services, where your contributions directly impact countless travelers. This is a thrilling phase for the industry, with AI driving dramatic changes. You'll experience the excitement of tackling new technologies at a rapid pace every day.

- Empowering Culture and Autonomy
Our organization embodies a "Get Things Done" spirit. We foster a culture where you are encouraged to proactively propose new initiatives, entrusted with significant autonomy, and empowered to lead and drive products and businesses forward.

- Career Growth and Skill Development
You'll collaborate and grow alongside a diverse team of highly skilled professionals, including CRM and digital marketing specialists, product managers, data scientists, and designers. This environment allows you to develop a wide range of marketing skills, such as content marketing, campaign design, and product design. Future career paths are diverse, including management roles overseeing overall content strategy or opportunities to challenge yourself in other marketing departments.

- Unique Competitive Advantages
You'll have the unique opportunity to engage in large-scale marketing challenges utilizing an exceptionally rare and massive dataset. This data leverages various Rakuten services like Rakuten Ichiba (e-commerce), Rakuten Card, and Rakuten Mobile, along with Rakuten member data. Our strong in-house culture means that engineers, data scientists, and designers are all part of our team. You'll experience dynamic product development firsthand, working closely and at high speed with these specialists.

Position Details

As a UGC Content Producer, you will be responsible for enhancing the quality and quantity of User Generated Content (UGC) and promoting its utilization across two key areas.

1. User-Generated Reviews from Hotel Guests
- Strategize and drive initiatives to encourage and maximize the quality and quantity of user reviews from guests who have stayed at accommodations booked via Rakuten Travel.(Examples: Design and implement review incentive programs with continuous PDCA cycles, execute seasonal review campaigns, develop and promote campaigns/services enabling individual hotels to boost user reviews, quantify the contribution of posted reviews (by number and content), and lead their monitoring and improvement through PDCA.)

- Research user needs for reviews and define the ideal user review experience scenario. Based on this, lead UI/UX improvements for review products.
- Identify, acquire, and nurture influential reviewers.

2. Content Posted by Accommodations on Rakuten Travel
- Plan and drive initiatives, campaigns, and exposure designs to encourage accommodations across Japan to post user-needed content using Rakuten Travel's content submission features.(Examples: Identify trends such as "all-inclusive" offerings, encourage hotels to publish articles related to these trends, curate this content, and leverage it to increase customer acquisition.)

Work Environment

Team Structure
- Marketing Department (about 70 people)
- Content Marketing Group (6 total) - 1 Manager, 1 Assistant Manager, 4 individual contributors
- A diverse age range from 20s to 40s.
- Experience mix: A balanced team with both early‑career and experienced hires (currently 3 early‑career and 3 experienced). Both the Manager and Assistant Manager joined as experienced hires.
- Working language: Japanese is the primary language for day‑to‑day communication in this role.

Mid-Career Talent: Backgrounds and Growth
- SEO specialist from a major job board
- Used Car E-commerce Web Director and Digital Marketer
- Editor from book and magazine publishing

Career Path Examples of Successful Mid-Career Hires
- Promoted to Assistant Manager in another Marketing group within the first year of joining

Mandatory Qualifications:

Proven experience in activating/utilizing user reviews and achieving results in online services such as travel, e-commerce (any sector), recruitment, real estate, or other online services.
While specific job titles or types of achievements are not limited, we envision cases such as.

- Planning and executing B2C campaigns to increase the number of user reviews.
- Planning and executing B2B campaigns to encourage user review submissions.
- Defining desired review information, features, and user scenarios based on user research, and improving the user experience for review submission and browsing.
- Planning and executing secondary content utilizing collected user reviews.
- Nurturing and hiring reviewers or, proven experience in operating proprietary social media platforms or community services.
- Experience in launching and activating proprietary social media or community services with demonstrable results.
- This refers to experience in operating your own social media or community service, not merely managing a company account on existing platforms like Instagram.

Desired Qualifications:

- Experience as a Web Producer or UI Designer, including user research, user scenario design, product/service planning, internal/external stakeholder coordination, and director management.

- Experience managing corporate accounts on third-party social media platforms such as Instagram.

- Experience as a Product Manager, including defining product development specifications.

- SQL: Intermediate to Advanced proficiency.

- Python: Intermediate to Advanced proficiency.

- Tableau: Intermediate to Advanced proficiency.

- Figma: Intermediate to Advanced proficiency.

Other Information:

Additional information on Location

Rakuten Crimson House
1 Chome-14-1 Tamagawa, Setagaya City, Tokyo

Additional information on English Qualification

TOEIC Score exceeding 800 (or similar level of English ability) or a University Degree earned in an English-speaking country.
Proof of qualifications will be required by the time of the job offer.
If no evidence is available to prove the qualifications denoted above, taking an IP test, organized by Rakuten, during selection process is required.

Rakuten Group, Inc. Homepage Link
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- Recruitment * Employment type is detailed
- Rakuten

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