BEST ADVICE CONCIERGE THE BEST CAREER ADVICE GIVEN TO HOTELIER PENG LOH Singaporean hotelier Peng Loh was born in Dublin and


raised in both Ireland and Singapore. After a few years as a lawyer in the UK, he said he “blindly blundered” into the hotel business. “It was the mid-point of the last Asian crisis and so I was involved in a lot of bankruptcy and liquidation work. For a young practitioner that was not a lot of fun. “At the same time, properties were cheap, and


the recession meant construction work was cheap.” The combination helped him convert a run-down Chinatown building into Hotel 1929, Singapore’s first trendy boutique inn. “We were the first, because nobody else dared to do something like that.” Soon, he was spearheading a surging renovation of the run-down district. For advice, he concedes: “I didn’t really get too much advice actually and to be honest perhaps if I had I might not have done it! Probably ignorance was a good tutor as it meant I was able to just feel my way about and solve things in my own way.”


His best guidance came by example: being diligent,


self-reliant, and believing in himself. “I guess it was watching the work ethic of my parents that made all the difference.” Building on the widespread acclaim for Hotel 1929,


Peng resuscitated other buildings nearby. He experimented with design, winning raves for innovations like New Majestic, which actually combines three historic shop-houses. From Singapore, Peng expanded to Shanghai, then London. All his properties are unique, claim historical appeal, and are revamped with distinctive design. To him, it’s a calling more than a career. “I don’t create hotels because it’s the easiest or best way to make money but because I really like the lifestyle and I have so much fun doing it. It’s lovely to preserve a slice of history – that’s one of the privileges of my job!” “You can never quite recreate the sense of time and age built into these old buildings; I like that I get to touch and feel history for real. I always try to imagine the stories they have to tell and the lives they have seen and touched.” His biggest project was century-old Town Hall in Bethnal Green. The East End, London relic had fallen into ruin;


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Peng renovated it into a hip hotel and apartment building. “In many ways, it was a transformative project,” he says, noting challenges of scale and significance. But he relishes them. “We are now doing another project in Sydney, converting the old Carlton United Brewery headquarters and Old Clare Hotel into a really cool property. “Our hotels are all different and one-offs, and they are always heritage buildings or buildings with a lot of character, which sets up apart.” As to design, he adds: “The hospitality industry takes itself way too seriously, so when I set out to do this, it was key for me to inject some fun into the process and always to be original as possible.” The best advice he offers: “achieve something original


and fun. You also need to constantly innovate, always be ready to push the boundaries.”


Author Bio: Ron Gluckman is a journalist who contributes to Time, Travel & Leisure, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Town and Country and Conde Nast Traveler. A resident in Asia for more than 20 years, Ron is currently based in Bangkok.


“You can never quite recreate the sense of time and age built into these old buildings; I like that I get to touch and feel history for real.”


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