This Hong Kong CEO from a billionaire family is reinventing hotels for millennials

Business June 06, 2019 (0)

When Sonia Cheng became chief executive of Hong Kong-based Rosewood Hotel Group, she had a particular type of traveler in mind: herself.

Cheng was 30 at the time when one of her family’s businesses, New World Hospitality Group, bought Rosewood from its Texan owner for $229.5 million in 2011, and appointed her CEO. She wanted to turn it into a brand that would appeal to affluent younger consumers. Having grown up in her family’s hotel business — the Chengs are worth an estimated $22.5 billion, according to Forbes — she had traveled a lot and started her career as an investment banker in New York and Hong Kong.

“When I look at Rosewood, I see myself as a target customer. So, that makes it quite easy to kind of craft the experiences, because I would be looking at the lens of the millennial travelers,” she told CNBC’s “The Brave Ones. ”

When Rosewood took over management of the historic Hotel de Crillon in Paris in 2013, it spent four years renovating it, turning its Michelin-starred Les Ambassadeurs restaurant into a bar. At Rosewood Beijing, Cheng opened a Chinese hot pot restaurant, giving a traditional dish a high-end twist, aiming to “draw the crowd to the destination,” she said.