LUGWE LEAVES SERENA TO JOIN JACARANDA
(Posted 16th July 2014)
Killian Lugwe has joined Jacaranda Hotels as Managing Director, leaving behind a long and distinguished career at Serena Hotels, where he rose through the ranks over the years. Coming from a position as lodge General Manager in Tanzania to Kampala in 2005, just as Serena Hotels had taken over the former Nile Hotel, he was overseeing the transformation of the former government owned three star property to a fully-fledged five star hotel and then managed Kampala’s best hotel before transferring to the Nairobi Serena Hotel, also as General Manager. He went on to take up a position at the company’s head office in Nairobi where he was overseeing operations of the city hotels in Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali and Dar es Salaam as Director of Operations, before now joining Jacaranda Hotels.
With a hotel in Nairobi’s Westlands area, a lodge on Lake Elementaita and a resort at Diani Beach, which closed some time ago ‘for renovations’ – a phrase commonly used nowadays to explain away hotel closures following the devastating loss of occupancies the Kenya coast has suffered over the past year – is Jacaranda a very much smaller hotel group but has a long standing in Nairobi where the original Jacaranda has been operating since the 1970’s.
Ranked by TripAdvisor as number 41 out of 96 hotels in Nairobi does the hotel officially carry a 4 star rating.
Killian follows in the footsteps of another former General Manager of the Kampala Serena Hotel, Mr. Mugo Maringa, who left to take over as CEO of Boma Hotels, a group owned by the Kenya Red Cross with their flagship 5 star Boma Hotel in the Nairobi West area of the city. For more details on Jacaranda’s properties in Kenya visit www.jacarandahotels.com
