Joanne Taylor-Stagg has been appointed as General Manager of The Athenaeum Hotel & Residences in London, a seasoned professional with over twenty-five years’ experience.
Joanne’s strong creativity and leadership helped her facilitate the repositioning of The Trafalgar St James from a 4-star hotel to a luxury 5-star boutique during her time as General Manager. This repositioning included introducing the hotel to a new audience and creating the highly successful food and beverage concept ‘The Rooftop’, named as ‘Best Rooftop Bar’ by The Daily Telegraph.
Between 2011-2016, she held several key roles within the ReDefineBDL group starting as General Manager ReDefineBDL based at the Crowne Plaza London, Docklands before progressing to Cluster General Manager overseeing Crowne Plaza Docklands, Crowne Plaza Marlow and Crowne Plaza Reading properties. Ascending to Divisional Director for the group; overseeing 8 managed hotels between January 2015-March 2016.
Progressing and nurturing young talent is one of the reasons Joanne gets out of bed in the morning and is an initiative she is fiercely passionate about. She played a pivotal role setting up the inaugural IHG Academy programme to help young and long-term unemployed individuals return to the workplace, as well as assisting Dr Hilary Cooke to setup of a mentoring scheme between St Julian Scholars and the Master Innholders Aspiring Leaders Diploma graduates.
She has overseen multi-million-pound refurbishments, due diligence work on acquisitions and refinancing deals and helped and supported her teams to delivering exceptional results; with record breaking revenue and exceeding both guest and staff satisfaction indexes.
Joanne is joining The Athenaeum Hotel & Residences at a critical time in the hotel’s trajectory with new products and services launching within the property including the refurbished Residences, as well as the beautiful new 10th floor hotel guest space, The View.
She is a British/South African national and holds several degrees in hospitality including: Executive Masters in Hospitality & Tourism Leadership and the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, General Managers Programme.
Joanne is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality, a Master Innholder, and St Julian’s Scholar.