The Hotelier Who Does

Farid Schouciar is the empowering General Manager at the New World Makati who is leading the charge to the hotel's 25th anniversary.

- Chino R. Hernandez

New World Makati General Manager Farid Schoucair discovered his calling in the hospitality industry as a young man in Paris. During the 1970s, it was quite an unusual dream for an educated person to want to work for hotels or in tourism, when other “well-regarded” professions were considered more suitable for a man of his background. “Back then, when you graduate, people expect you to be a doctor or engineer. To be in the tourism industry was something people frowned upon but my mom loved to travel, and she really inspired me. I realized that working in a hotel was really a way for me to see the world.” Off he went around the globe, working for hotels in a career spanning almost four decades.

25 YEARS WITH THE Hyatt

The half-Swiss, half-Lebanese hotelier enrolled in a hotel management school in Switzerland in 1978. He earned his diploma two years later before joining the Hyatt in Dubai as a management trainee. Farid was well regarded and worked his way up the ranks in Hyatt properties around the world, including Macau, Saipan, Singapore, and eventually the Philippines in 1991. His first General Manager position was in 1996, when he ran the Hyatt regency in South Korea. The soft-spoken hotel executive even worked for the Grand Millennium, a top-tier luxury hotel in Kuala Lumpur owned by the Hyatt group. It wasn’t long before New World Makati sought his expertise to manage the hotel, and lead the renovation, before opening in 1993.