Nicholas Andrew has spent two decades learning that great hospitality is not a profession. It is a philosophy. Now, as Hotel Manager at Hoteloco, he is putting it all into practice.
Nicholas Andrew can trace every decision in his career back to a table. Not a hotel check-in desk or a restaurant pass, but the tables his Greek parents set for hundreds of guests at a time, where the joy of welcoming others was not a performance, but a way of life.
That instinct, forged in childhood, has carried him from a Lebanese bakery in Sydney to Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Florida, from boutique hotels in London to quarantine operations alongside the Australian Defence Force during the global pandemic. Today, as Hotel Manager at Hoteloco under the Mandala umbrella, he is channelling more than fifteen years of hard-won experience into building a property and a team that reflects the hospitality values he has long believed in.
“Hospitality, for me, has always been about more than operations. It is about leadership, mentorship and creating environments where both guests and teams thrive.”
The long road to the top
Nicholas’s academic path into the industry was as formative as his practical one. After receiving a NSW Vocational Education State Award in Commercial Cookery in 2009, he enrolled at The Hotel School Sydney, where he discovered that his real passion was not the kitchen but the floor. A six-month placement at Dunk Island Resort, cut short by Cyclone Yasi, gave him an early lesson in adaptability. A subsequent stint with the opening team at The Star Sydney’s The Darling introduced him to the demands of luxury hospitality and VIP service.
The pivotal chapter came in 2012, when Nicholas paused his degree to accept a place in Disney’s International College Program at Walt Disney World. A year in Florida, first operating a Finding Nemo attraction and then working Front Desk at Coronado Springs Resort, clarified everything. “Welcoming families on their dream holidays, being part of milestone moments and creating lasting memories cemented my love for hotel leadership,” he reflects. “It was, quite genuinely, a defining chapter in my career.”
Lessons from a pandemic
Returning to Sydney and graduating in 2014, Nicholas rose quickly, moving from porter to Duty Manager at Rydges Sydney Airport within a year, then spent three years refining his craft in London’s boutique hotel scene under a General Manager he credits as a defining mentor. Back in Australia with TFE Hotels from 2018, he found himself facing the industry’s greatest modern test when COVID-19 struck in 2020. Rather than a pause, it became a crucible.
At Adina Town Hall, which converted into a quarantine hotel, Nicholas worked alongside NSW Health, NSW Police and the ADF in conditions nothing in a hotel management textbook could have prepared him for. “It demanded resilience, adaptability and composure,” he says simply. “I focused on leading steadily and delivering consistently under extraordinary circumstances.”
“Progression is rarely linear. Some of my biggest growth periods came from unexpected detours or challenging environments.”
A culture of autonomy
What drew Nicholas to Mandala, after a further stint at Ovolo The Valley where he rose to Executive Assistant Manager and stepped into the General Manager role in an interim capacity, was something specific: genuine trust. “Mandala actively supports autonomy with accountability,” he says. “This allows agility, entrepreneurial thinking and property-specific decision-making that reflects the market and the team.” He describes the culture in three words: autonomous, empowering, trust-driven.
Since stepping into the Hotel Manager role at Hoteloco in 2025, he has focused on elevating the product, refining operations and building what he describes as a team culture centred on empowerment and succession readiness. The results, he says, are visible in both guest feedback and performance outcomes.
For Nicholas, the measure of leadership was never a title. It was the moment he could step back and trust that the team he had built, the people he had mentored, challenged and backed, could deliver without him. From a Greek household that treated every dinner as a celebration to a career that has spanned continents and crises, that instinct has never wavered.