Gianluca Cugnetto is an Italian luxury-hospitality executive who has managed hotels and resorts across Europe and beyond. He is also known as the former partner of British actress Hannah Waddingham, best known for playing Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso. The former couple share a daughter, born in 2014.
Cugnetto’s professional career includes senior positions at Hotel du Vin in Brighton, Amavi Hotel in Cyprus, Château de Codignat in France and Hotel Bellevue in Croatia. Although some online biographies still describe him as Hotel Bellevue’s general manager, the hotel identified a different person in that position by August 2025.
Key takeaways
- Career: Gianluca Cugnetto is an Italian hospitality executive with experience managing luxury hotels and overseeing food-and-beverage operations.
- Professional background: His documented positions include Hotel du Vin Brighton in 2015, Amavi Hotel in Cyprus in 2019 and Hotel Bellevue in Croatia from 2023.
- Hannah Waddingham connection: Cugnetto is the actress’s former long-term partner. They have a daughter together, born in 2014.
- Relationship history: Waddingham discussed their separation in a 2023 Glamour interview, although their exact relationship dates remain uncertain.
- Latest career information: Hotel Bellevue identified Kristina Krstinić as general manager by August 2025. Cugnetto’s exact professional position as of October 2026 has not been publicly established.
Gianluca Cugnetto profile summary
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Full name | Gianluca Cugnetto |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Profession | Luxury-hospitality executive |
| Industry | Hotel management, resort operations and food and beverage |
| Early background | Grew up around his family’s hospitality business in Calabria, Italy, according to his 2025 interview |
| Previous UK position | General manager, Hotel du Vin Brighton, appointed in 2015 |
| Other documented roles | Amavi Hotel, Cyprus; Château de Codignat, France |
| Hotel Bellevue | Appointed general manager in June 2023 |
| Known former partner | Hannah Waddingham, British actress |
| Children | One daughter with Waddingham, born in 2014 |
Early life and background
Gianluca Cugnetto’s connection to hospitality began before he entered international hotel management.
In a May 2025 interview with Travelling for Business, he described growing up in Calabria, southern Italy, where his parents operated a hospitality business.
He recalled becoming familiar with the industry through the family operation. That early exposure helped shape his decision to pursue hospitality professionally.
His subsequent career took him into international hotel operations, with particular experience in food-and-beverage management.
These responsibilities involve overseeing restaurant and bar operations, coordinating service teams, managing hospitality standards and maintaining the guest experience. They also provide experience that can lead to responsibility for an entire hotel.
Cugnetto’s later appointments show that progression from specialist operational management into general-manager positions.
How Gianluca Cugnetto built his hospitality career
International hotel experience and Hotel du Vin Brighton
Before becoming a hotel general manager, Cugnetto worked in senior hospitality positions associated with major international hotel brands.
According to Boutique Hotelier’s September 2015 report, his previous experience included directorships at Le Méridien in Dubai and Sheraton.
The publication also described his professional experience in locations including London, the Maldives and the Caribbean.
In approximately July 2015, Cugnetto became general manager of Hotel du Vin in Brighton, England.
The appointment marked a move into responsibility for the hotel’s overall operation rather than a single department.
Speaking about the Brighton property, he outlined plans to improve guest service and make changes to its conference facilities and restaurant.
Those priorities reflected the wider responsibilities of hotel general management, where accommodation, dining, events and customer service must work together.
The contemporary reporting documents his appointment and intended improvements, although it does not establish the eventual commercial results of those plans.
Managing Amavi Hotel in Cyprus
By early 2019, Cugnetto was general manager of Amavi Hotel in Paphos, Cyprus.
The property was preparing to open with a distinctive hospitality concept aimed at couples.
In a February 2019 interview with the Cyprus Mail, Cugnetto discussed how the hotel’s accommodation, restaurants and guest experiences were designed around visitors travelling as a pair.
The concept distinguished Amavi from conventional family-oriented resorts.
For Cugnetto, the role involved overseeing a property with a clearly defined market and service offering. The hotel’s dining arrangements and guest experiences were central to that positioning.
Amavi welcomed its first guests on 24 March 2019, with Cugnetto serving as general manager during the opening.
An April 2019 report by Philenews documented the opening and identified him among the hotel’s management team.
This period provides a particularly clear example of his professional responsibilities: managing a hotel as it introduced a specific hospitality concept to guests.
Château de Codignat in France
Cugnetto’s career also included a management position at Château de Codignat, a luxury château hotel in France.
Public responses to guest reviews from November 2020 identify him as the property’s Maître de Maison, a senior hospitality-management title.
The responses, published through the hotel’s management account on Tripadvisor, establish his association with the property during that period.
The position added another type of luxury accommodation to his professional experience, following earlier work with international hotel groups and larger hospitality operations.
His appointment at Hotel Bellevue in Croatia
One of Cugnetto’s best-documented senior appointments came in June 2023.
Lošinj Hotels & Villas announced that he had been appointed general manager of Hotel Bellevue, a five-star property on Lošinj Island in Croatia.
The official appointment announcement, published by eHotelier on 23 June 2023, described his international experience and previous work with hospitality groups including Anantara, Starwood, Marriott and Relais & Châteaux.
The appointment placed him in charge of a luxury property whose offering included accommodation, dining, wellness and guest experiences.
Hotel Bellevue’s location on the Adriatic island also made local character an important part of its hospitality offering.
His approach to hotel management
Cugnetto discussed his work at Hotel Bellevue in his May 2025 Travelling for Business interview.
He described employee communication as an important part of hotel management, explaining the value of listening to staff across different levels of an organisation rather than relying exclusively on department heads.
His comments reflected an operational approach in which employees working directly with guests can contribute information about service standards and areas needing improvement.
He also discussed personalised guest experiences and the importance of paying attention to details.
At Hotel Bellevue, his stated priorities included connecting the property with local culture and gastronomy, developing wellness experiences and improving sustainability practices.
He identified energy efficiency and waste reduction among the areas relevant to hotel operations.
These were professional priorities he described during his tenure, rather than independently measured outcomes. Nevertheless, they show the areas of hotel management on which he publicly focused.
Is Gianluca Cugnetto still Hotel Bellevue’s general manager?
Gianluca Cugnetto is no longer identified as Hotel Bellevue’s general manager in the hotel’s more recent public communications.
He was still being presented in the role in early 2025. A January article in Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list included comments attributed to him about the hotel’s New Year celebrations, while his May interview also identified him as general manager.
However, by 18 August 2025, responses published through Hotel Bellevue’s management account were signed by Kristina Krstinić as general manager.
Additional August responses carried the same identification.
Lošinj Hotels & Villas subsequently identified Krstinić in that position through its official company communications.
The precise date and circumstances of Cugnetto’s departure have not been publicly established.
A biography published by NewsDip in April 2026 reported that he had subsequently undertaken hospitality consultancy work involving Villa Lanzirotti in Sicily. The reported assignment concerned hospitality strategy and property repositioning, although its exact scope and results have not been independently confirmed.
As of 18 October 2026, Cugnetto’s exact current executive position remains unclear.
Gianluca Cugnetto and Hannah Waddingham’s relationship
Outside the hospitality industry, Gianluca Cugnetto is widely recognised because of his former relationship with actress Hannah Waddingham.
Waddingham is an established British stage and screen performer whose television work includes Game of Thrones, Sex Education and Ted Lasso.
She became particularly well known internationally for her portrayal of Rebecca Welton in the Apple TV comedy.
Cugnetto and Waddingham were in a long-term romantic relationship and have a daughter together, born in 2014.
Their connection has been identified in major entertainment publications, including The Guardian’s July 2026 interview with Waddingham.
When did they separate?
The exact dates of Cugnetto and Waddingham’s relationship have been reported inconsistently.
Some older entertainment articles described them as being together for more than a decade, while later biographies suggested a separation around 2022 or 2023.
However, Waddingham gave a different account in an October 2023 interview with Glamour.
She said their relationship ended when their daughter was approximately two and a half years old.
Given their daughter’s 2014 birth year, that would suggest a separation around 2016 or 2017, although Waddingham did not establish an exact calendar date.
Her account is therefore more useful than assigning a definitive breakup year based on later celebrity biographies.
In the same interview, Waddingham discussed raising her daughter while maintaining her acting career.
She also spoke about her relationship with her daughter’s father in terms that indicated they remained on good terms at the time.
Were Gianluca Cugnetto and Hannah Waddingham married?
Cugnetto is generally identified as Waddingham’s former partner, rather than her former husband.
A July 2021 article published by MEAWW explicitly reported that they were not married.
The later public reporting about their separation also describes a partnership rather than a marriage.
For that reason, referring to Cugnetto as Waddingham’s ex-partner is more accurate than calling him her ex-husband.
Their daughter
Cugnetto and Waddingham share a daughter named Kitty, who was born in 2014.
In a July 2026 interview reported by E! News, Waddingham discussed how motherhood had influenced her portrayal of Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso.
She explained that her experience as a mother informed aspects of her performance and the way she approached her character.
Waddingham has also spoken publicly about balancing her acting commitments with raising her daughter.
In a May 2026 interview with Women’s Health UK, reported by the Press Association, she discussed the responsibilities of being a single parent and the importance of maintaining financial independence through her career.
These public comments provide context for Waddingham’s experience following the relationship’s end, without establishing Cugnetto’s private parenting arrangements.
His professional identity beyond the Waddingham connection
Although his former relationship with Hannah Waddingham accounts for much of the general public’s interest in him, Cugnetto has a separately documented professional career.
His appointments show experience across several forms of hospitality, from international hotel groups to an adults-oriented resort concept and a luxury island property.
The transition from food-and-beverage leadership to general management is particularly relevant to understanding his work.
At Hotel du Vin, he discussed improving service and facilities. At Amavi, he helped oversee the opening of a property built around a specific guest experience. At Hotel Bellevue, he described a management approach focused on staff communication, local hospitality and operational efficiency.
Together, those documented roles establish the professional background behind his public identity.
His most recent confirmed hotel-management tenure was at Hotel Bellevue, where he was still identified as general manager in May 2025. Later communications placed Kristina Krstinić in that role, while reports of Cugnetto’s subsequent consultancy activity have yet to establish a definitive current position.
That distinction matters when reading older biographies: his Hotel Bellevue appointment is a documented part of his career, but it should not be presented as his current job as of October 2026.
