MUNSHI AHMED FOR FORBESA
llen Law was 24 and had just inished a bach-
elor’s degree in math and management at King’s
College London. He was planning to stay abroad
when his father, Law Kar Po, called with a tempt-
ing proposal: return home to Hong Kong im-
mediately and run his newly purchased hotel. “Dad said, ‘We
know nothing about hotels and we are too old to learn,’ ” recalls
Allen. “I decided to take up the challenge. I lew back.”
hat was 2003 , the middle of the SARs crisis, and Kar Po
had picked up the Park Hotel brand and its one 16-story hotel
at the bargain price of $67 million. he following months were
a blur for the younger Law as he embarked on a crash course
in hotel management, working two shits at the Park Hotel
Hong Kong in the heart of Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui district.
He learned every job, beginning with the bellhop’s, and became
the general manager in 18 months. “In the beginning, you feel
thrown into the deep end of the ocean,” he says, his accent and
manner notably Cantonese. “But you learn how to swim.”
Now 3 8, Allen is chief executive of the family’s privately
held Park Hotel Group and passionate about the hotel business.
He and the group are based in Singapore and come 2019, theportfolio will boast 16 hotels. Park Hotel owns 6 of them, holds
a stake in another and manages all of them. hey’re a mix of
luxury, upscale and midscale, and they’ll span 11 cities in eight
countries. “Our strength is unique,” he says. “We invest and
operate. We understand the entire cycle, A to Z.”
Allen says the group’s hotel revenue last year approached
$1 35 million, nearly 17 % more than 2016. hat doesn’t include
revenue for the retail and food & beverage parts of the busi-
ness, which he declines to disclose. He also won’t provide net
proit igures. But the hotels are certainly a valuable asset—
they account for nearly half of Kar Po’s estimated $5 billion in
wealth, which ranked him No. 18 on Forbes Asia’s list of Hong
Kong’s 50 richest in January.
Expansion and diversiication ramped up last year. Park
Hotel opened three hotels it manages: two in Singapore—the
upscale Park Hotel Farrer Park and its irst midscale venue,
the Destination Singapore Beach Road—and the luxury Grand
Park Kodhipparu Maldives resort, in which the group holds a
30 % stake. Up next: the newly built Park Hotel Yeongdeungpo,
Seoul, which was set to open in 2017 but has been delayed until
the second half of this year, and upscale hotels in both Adelaide50 | FORBES ASIA APRIL 2018FORBES ASIA
ALLEN LAWFrom Bellhop
to CEO
Hong Kong’s Law family bought a hotel on a whim and now
boasts an entire chain, thanks to dad letting his son run the show.
BY JANE A. PETERSONA GENERATION EMERGES