VIRGILE SIMON BERTRAND FOR FORBES
AUGUST 2017 FORBES ASIA | 17reopened, and the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East
Side. There are now 20 Rosewood hotels, but that number is set
to double within a few years—in the pipeline are Guangzhou,
Phuket, Phnom Penh and Hoi An, Vietnam, and a lavish tented
villa encampment in Luang Prabang, Laos. In all, as the head
of Rosewood Hotel Group, New World’s hotel-management
company, she oversees 57 hotels in 18 countries, under the
Rosewood, New World and Pentahotel brands. New World
owns many of these hotels, including the Rosewood Beijing and
the Carlyle, and it will own the new Hong Kong hotel.
Cheng took over New World’s hotel-management business
in 2008, while still in her 20s. She says her plan all along was to
create a new luxury tier aimed at well-heeled New Age travelers,but the Rosewood deal provided an unexpected path. “They had
a wealth of knowledge and experience, and what they did over
the last 30 years was amazing,” she says. “But it was not so well
marketed. Only a small audience knew about it.”
Rosewood instantly catapulted New World into the top
category of resorts. But merging two companies with different
cultures, in Hong Kong and America, presented new challenges
for this young CEO. “It was not easy at the beginning because
you have to spend a lot of time reassuring the team members,
showing what we want to do with the company, convincing
them that this is a new chapter, [making sure] everyone is
working toward one goal and one vision,” she says.
Gaw, the chairman of Gaw Capital in Hong Kong, calls it“I like to be a little unconventional”:
Rosewood CEO Sonia Cheng.