Eljesa Saciri announces departure from Zetter hotels

Acorn Award winner Eljesa Saciri has announced her departure from London’s Zetter hotels after “four beautiful years” at the group.

Her departure comes roughly a month after Liutauras Vaitkevicius left his role as managing director of the Zetter after four and a half years at the company.

Saciri, who was formerly general manager at the Zetter Clerkenwell and Marrable’s hotel, was recognised with an Acorn Award in 2023 for her financial acumen, her commitment to staff development, and her support for the wider industry.

Prior to working at Zetter, she had started out as a bar-back at the Doyle Collection before moving up the ranks to launch the Dalloway Terrace and the Coral Room in London.

In a heartfelt statement on LinkedIn, she thanked Vaitkevicius for his “unwavering trust and faith” in her, and added: “I am still truly in awe of your leadership. I owe my Acorn to you (you can pry it out of my dead hands one day). Thank you for the platform you gave me, thank you for... holding the doors open, not trying to change, minimise nor quieten who I am… Together, we challenged norms and rewrote rules, we built things that mattered, made calls that others might not have, and found meaning in the margins.”

Saciri also thanked Jeremy Daudin, group head of sales and marketing at the Zetter, for being “the voice of reason wrapped in optimism”, and Tatjana Jasinka, head housekeeper at the Zetter Hotel & Townhouse, who offered her “guidance, brilliance and belief”.

The hotelier concluded: “We took home the awards, we won, we learnt from our losses, we kept each other going, but above all, we did it together. We made magic. We will forever be limitless.”

The Zetter recently appointed Kevin Rockey, former head of operations for northern and eastern regions at Ennismore, as area general manager for the Zetter hotels, a new role for the group.

He will be responsible for leading the launch of the 68-bedroom Zetter Bloomsbury, which is due to open in January 2026 as the group’s third London hotel.

The Zetter Group was founded by restaurateurs Mark Sainsbury and Michael Benyan in 2004. The pair sold the company to global hospitality investor Orca Holding for an undisclosed sum in March 2021.