Sonia Cheng is CEO of New World Hospitality, a hotel-management company with a global portfolio of properties that includes pentahotels, a 'neighbourhood lifestyle' brand that offers a cool, tech-savvy, creative environment for independent travellers.
The brand has 15 hotels worldwide and plans to increase the total to 80 by 2020. The first pentahotel in Asia opened in Shanghai in 2008, followed by one in Beijing in March this year. Another will open in Kowloon in 2013.
Cheng graduated from Harvard University with a degree in applied mathematics and economics. She worked for several years in finance before joining the New World Group in 2008, where she helped set up its hotel-management business.
How did you become interested in the hotel industry?
I grew up surrounded by hotels. I've always travelled a lot, and I liked going to new hotels and seeing how the different concepts, designs and brands worked.
My interest is more than just about hotels, though. It's really about being able to establish a new vision for New World Hotels, which has been around in Asia and Hong Kong for a long time, and rejuvenating it, re-establishing its goals and taking it to the next level with New World Hospitality.
It's an opportunity that any entrepreneur would be eager to have.
