This podcast is being sponsored by TRUSTmenti: trustmenti.com/beta-invite
In this podcast, Tanja Stegmüller introduces our listeners to her new entrepreneurial adventure, TRUSTmenti. TRUSTmenti is a global, remote-based mentorship platform designed specifically for the hospitality industry. Co-founded by Tanja and Diego del Paso, it aims to combat high turnover and talent retention challenges by connecting rising professionals and students with seasoned industry leaders. The hospitality industry loses people in their first 12 months because the gap between education and real-world practice is never properly closed. TRUSTmenti is committed to creating a bridge: a mentorship platform connecting hospitality students and early-career professionals with experienced practitioners, built around skill development, confidence, and the operational knowledge no curriculum fully teaches.
During this interview, I also ask Tanja about her global career and her hospitality specialty, which is luxury hotel pre-openings. Tanja is happy to share some of the lesser-known details of how a hotel pre-opening materialises and how she has had the opportunity to experience these pre-openings from different perspectives. But pre-openings are only half of what has drawn Tanja to hospitality. The other half is the work itself - no two shifts the same, no guest like the last.
As a Swiss national, Tanja also shares her ideas on why Swiss Hospitality Management schools are considered the best and why they continue to attract a diverse and global student body.
Tanja Stegmüller grew up in a small town in the Swiss Alps with an early and persistent urge to see the world, a pull that would go on to shape an international career across luxury hospitality in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
Over the years Tanja has worked with some of the industry's most celebrated names, including Emirates Palace, Mandarin Oriental, and Katara Hospitality. Alongside this, she has built a rare specialism in pre-openings, having been part of eleven hotel and resort launches, and, more unusually, having experienced them from three distinct vantage points.
Tanja started guest-facing during the opening of the Bürgenstock Resort on Lake Lucerne, one of Switzerland's largest luxury launches in recent memory. In Dubai, she opened an entire portfolio of EMAAR properties at Dubai Creek Harbour as the right hand to the Area General Manager, observing pre-openings from the executive side. She then moved into operational leadership as Director of Operations for a new opening in Bern.
Based in Switzerland, Tanja holds an Executive MBA in Global Hospitality Management from Les Roches. During her studies she co-founded TRUSTmenti, a platform connecting hospitality talent with experienced mentors, born from her own conviction that the managers who entrust people with real responsibility early are the ones who truly shape a career.
