City Lodge Hotels staff appointments

Waylin Koopman

Waylin Koopman has been appointed revenue management and pricing analyst at City Lodge Hotels, reporting to group revenue manager Edwin Louw. With over 16 years of experience in pricing, business analysis, and finance across various industries, he most recently served as pricing and business analyst at Afrox. There, he measured and analysed price performance, managed pricing and analytics tools, identified business improvement strategies, and maintained KPI dashboards and client relationships.

Previously, Waylin was a pricing specialist at Momentum and Nedbank and held finance roles as a credit controller and collections analyst. He holds a BCom in Business Management from the University of South Africa and has earned multiple certifications in analytics tools, systems, and artificial intelligence.

Thato Lebakeng

Thato Lebakeng joins City Lodge Hotels’ IT department at the group’s support office in Johannesburg as senior IT infrastructure analyst. He will provide second-line support for complex technical issues, maintain and configure hardware, software, and applications, assist with IT infrastructure projects, and manage the cloud environment in line with business objectives and policies.

He previously worked as an IT infrastructure analyst at Datacentrix and brings nine years of experience across various industries. Thato holds a National Diploma in Information and Communication Technology from the Central University of Technology (Free State).

Nhlamulo Vukeya

Nhlamulo Vukeya joins City Lodge Hotels’ IT department at the group’s support office in Johannesburg as an IT service desk analyst. He will provide first-line IT support to all business units and hotels, ensuring consistent service for internal users.

He previously worked as an IT intern in ICT and knowledge management at Cathsseta for a year and holds a Diploma in Information Technology (Network Management) from Rosebank College.

Layla Rajah

Layla Rajah has joined the HR Department as group training coordinator. She is passionate about fostering growth and development, and brings with her a wealth of hotel experience to the group’s training department and supporting teams. She joined City Lodge Hotels in May 2019 as a graduate intern, and was placed on the Accelerated Development and Deployment Programme in January 2020. Prior to joining the HR Department, Layla was junior assistant general manager at City Lodge Hotel GrandWest in Cape Town.

Layla started out in the industry as an operations management intern at Hilton Hotel Hartford in Connecticut, USA, in April 2016, taking up the position of general manager at Soqo Hospitality in Johannesburg in September 2017. She has a BTech Hospitality Management and a Diploma in Hospitality Management from the University of Johannesburg.