It was in 2002, on a Saturday morning like any other, that Carolyn Choo received a phone call that would change the course of her life. The person on the line was her father, billionaire hotelier Choo Chong Ngen, the founder and chairman of Worldwide Hotels Group (WWHG), which today is behind hotel brands Hotel 81, Hotel Mi, V Hotel, Venue Hotel, Hotel Boss, Value Hotel and Icon Hotel. “He was [at work], calling me out of the blue to tell me to join the family business. His tone was formal and urgent, which [was odd], given how close we are,” recalls the CEO and managing director of WWHG.
By that year, Choo had spent more than three years as a management trainee at a local bank, a role she took on after graduating from the Nanyang Technological University with a degree in business administration. With that call, she found herself at a crossroads much sooner than expected—she had originally planned to spend at least a decade in banking before joining her family’s hospitality business. “To this day, I
