From 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.

- Jane A. Peterson

Allen Law was 24 and had just finished a bachelor'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 tempting proposal: return home to Hong Kong immediately 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 flew back.”

That 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. The following months were a blur for the younger Law as he embarked on a crash course in hotel management, working two shifts 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 38, 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, the portfolio will boast 16 hotels. Park Hotel owns 6 of them, holds a stake in another and manages all of them. They’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.”