Hospitality Assured Award in 2011 by the Hospitality Institute for highest-scoring best newcomer.

 

Johan has an excellent record for developing business hotels and has spent the last 10 years in the United Kingdom with Guoman & Thistle, ABode and Radisson in senior hotel-management positions.

 

He started his hospitality career as a management trainee at the Carlton Hotel, Johannesburg, in 1995, before moving to London in 1997 to become assistant restaurant manager at Richoux Restaurants. He went on to become guest relations and sales manager for Radisson Edwardian Hotels, London, before returning to South Africa in 1999 to work for Sun International as duty manager of The Palace of the Lost City at Sun City.

 

In 2001, he became front office manager for the Ambassador Hotel in Cape Town. He then moved back to London in 2003 and worked for Radisson Edwardian at the Grafton and Mountbatten Hotels, before being promoted to operations manager at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Manchester.

 

During his four-year tenure with Radisson Edwardian, he received an Acorn Award for outstanding achievements in the industry. He also attended Oxford University where he completed an advanced management programme. The programme included, among other topics, strategic marketing, organisational behaviour and corporate finance.

 

From 2007 to the end of 2008, he worked for Abode Hotels and Michael Caine’s Restaurants as opening general manager, and then, in February 2010, he joined Guoman and Thistle Hotels as GM of The Kingsley and of the Thistle Euston, where he successfully participated in the repositioning of both these corporate hotels after extensive refurbishment.

 

His approach to hospitality is based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. He says: “To succeed, we need to meet our guest’s physiological and safety needs; and we need to give them a sense of belonging, respect their personal ambitions and help them realise their potential.”