Women at City Lodge Hotels are more than employees - meet our COO, Lindiwe Sangweni-Siddo

As Women's Month of August unfolds, City Lodge Hotels proudly shines the spotlight on several women across the organisation in a series called “More Than Employees”. First up is Chief Operating Officer (COO), @Lindiwe Sangweni-Siddo, delving into her career milestones and personal achievements that have shaped her professional journey and approach to hospitality.

Career Journey

Lindiwe’s remarkable journey in the hospitality industry began at Ecole Les in Switzerland and Penn State University in the USA, where she obtained a BSc in Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, graduating in 1993. Her hospitality career began at the Grand Hyatt Washington DC in the USA, followed by the Park Hyatt Rosebank in Johannesburg, where she was appointed to the Executive Committee as Rooms Director.

Lindiwe’s career path has included serving as Chief Director of Tourism Support at the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in 1999, before being appointed as General Manager of the InterContinental Sandton Towers Hotel. She was instrumental in developing the first Holiday Inn in Soweto in 2007, renamed the Soweto Hotel and Conference Centre, and was later appointed CEO of the Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre. She also served on the Board of South African Tourism and was Chairperson of the Tourism Transformation Council of South Africa (TTCSA) from 2019 to 2022. Recently, she was appointed to the Academic Board of the Swiss Hotel School in Johannesburg. 

Lindiwe joined City Lodge Hotels in 2015 as a Divisional Director: Operations and an EXCO member and was appointed to the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer in 2018.

An exciting development has been the publication of Lindiwe’s debut book in August 2024, "The Syndicate of 22 Natives," a memoir about her father’s life as a family man, academic, liberation struggle activist, and the first chairperson of the Public Service Commission of South Africa post-1994.

The personal is the Professional

Reflecting on her achievements, Lindiwe says, “I couldn’t have been interested in hospitality had it not been for the life my parents lived. The fact that we lived a life in exile from South Africa due to the Apartheid regime making it unpalatable to raise a family, my parents chose to live outside of the country. Our life was spent traveling from a very early age, starting with Eswatini (Swaziland), where I was born, to Holland, Zambia, Kenya, and later Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA.”

Her passion for hospitality was ignited under her parents' roof. Her mother, a professional teacher specialising in Home Economics, practiced all her dishes and recipes at home. Lindiwe recalls, “I was her eager helper as soon as my eyes could see above the kitchen counter.” By the age of five, she had already developed a love for cooking.

Living in Zambia during the height of the liberation struggle, Lindiwe’s parents were deeply involved in the African National Congress (ANC). Their home became a safe house for ANC leadership, including the organisation’s president Mr OR Tambo. During the 1976 youth uprisings, their home also became a refuge for young people fleeing the Apartheid regime, and this experience, described in her book, fostered Lindiwe’s love for hospitality.

“Our home became a haven of hospitality – bums in beds, mouths to feed, a loving, warm embrace, and comfort to provide, which my parents shared with everyone in our home, not just immediate family,” she recalls. This, added to their frequent stays in hotels during their travels as a family, exposed her to the hospitality industry on a personal level and she chose to make it her career.

 Her father, Stan Sangweni, was less sure of this choice, preferring his daughter to take up a career as a doctor or lawyer. However, his sister, Lindiwe Mabuse, convinced him of the importance of trained Black hoteliers in a free South Africa, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Hard Work Pays Off

Lindiwe credits her work ethic on her upbringing: “It was ingrained in us that we had to work hard, and nothing comes easy in life. My father would always say, ‘Hard work pays off.’”

She has seen throughout her life, most recently with the publication of her first book, that when one puts in the energy and time, good results follow. As part of the executive team driving the group, Lindiwe emphasises hard work, discipline, and adherence to processes to achieve consistent results.

“In life, there are many challenges and none as great as Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown of businesses and movement. The pandemic was the ultimate training in survival for all of us,” she notes. “It gave us a whole new toolkit, especially for business continuity planning. Resiliency affects so many aspects of the business – shareholders, stakeholders, guests, staff, and suppliers. The processes you set up in the good years will carry you through the tough years, and during hard times you will grow your processes even further.” 

Being multi-skilled is essential to working one’s way up the career ladder in hospitality, with management having worked in every department and aspect of the business. 

Lindiwe says, “In a crunch, it comes back to where we started: you have to know how to clean toilets, scrub floors, make beds and flip eggs. To be able to run your business successfully and guide and inspire your team, you need to know all of this, because there will always be times when you will need all hands-on deck. People are motivated when they see management demonstrate the humility of working in the trenches when needed.”

The processes set up in the good years are designed to carry the business through the tough years. Management’s collective understanding of every aspect of the hotel business, from cleaning toilets to making beds, maintaining equipment to flipping eggs, helped guide and inspire staff during the pandemic.

She adds, “This brings me full circle to how my mother ran our home and welcomed guests. She didn’t think she was doing anything that spectacular, but her guests never forgot the crisp damask tablecloth and the best tableware, making them feel special and welcome. As Maya Angelou said, ‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’”

One of Lindiwe’s most memorable success stories is being part of the team that built the first 4-star hotel in Soweto. From securing funding and planning to watching it being built and welcoming the first guests, the experience was profound.

Innovate to Elevate

For Lindiwe, innovation is crucial to success, and she urges aspiring employees to examine the broader scope of hospitality in their studies, to keep up with trends in the key areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG); digital marketing; sales platforms; customer relationship management; and sustainability.

“It’s essential to stay up to date in new facets impacting the hospitality industry. Look at what drives innovation, technology, governance, corporate social responsibility (CSI), and environmental sustainability. Learn how guests of all ages and backgrounds think and behave, and what drives their choices,” she recommends.

To the younger generation, Lindiwe advises, “Understand what you’re getting into and where the world is going. Specialise in these areas to drive your business to success.”