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A day chosen at random may find Mark Wong waking up in a suite in Qiushui Villa, a century-old retreat in Hangzhou, China built by high-profile journalist Shi Liangcai. He will be greeted by a view of the West Lake, which is where he will catch the open-air night show, . A week later, he could be in residence at the Nagoya Kanko Hotel, where members of the Japanese imperial family have historically chosen to stay when they visit the city.

Such is the life of a man whose job it is to frequent some of Asia’s finest boutique hotels. Wong is the Asia-Pacific senior vice-president for Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH), a group of independently owned properties vetted for their ability to deliver a luxury experience. He grew up and is now based in Singapore, and began his hospitality career in 1995, having just completed an integrated marketing communications programme at Northwestern University in Chicago, in the United States.



“My dream was always to go to Madison Avenue in New York, and sort of be the ‘adman’,” he says. But Wong already had experience looking after travel accounts at advertising agencies, so Hyatt Hotels Corporation recruited him for its Hong Kong office, where he stayed for five years before joining American Express and moving to New York. In 2007, Wong settled back in Singapore, taking a job with Preferred Hotels & Resorts – also focused on independent hotels – before joining (and later rejoining) SLH in 2009.

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